


i'd love to take your time

by glockenspielium



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: A study of Hercules Mulligan: ICU nurse, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, M/M, Medical, ON HIATUS I AM SO SORRY, Suicidality, daily updates, lots of sadness, trauma victims
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 23,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7795597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glockenspielium/pseuds/glockenspielium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's quiet on the trauma ward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. scattered to the winds

**Author's Note:**

> I often have to stop myself from writing about my patients, they're worth more than that. This is my best attempt to let them be, but to tell their story.

It's a busy night on the ICU ward.

The trauma wing is nearly full, almost every bed occupied by some pour soul unlucky enough to be needing one. Hercules nods to the nursing staff as he makes his way down the long hall. He is pleased to see that Sam's been successfully transferred back to the neurology ward during the day, his tracheostomy must have taken well- but it's a sign of the strain on their resources that multi-trauma cases like his are being sent away after such a short stay, and it's not a good sign.

At least Peggy's back from maternity leave. The night shifts never quite the same without her manning the cubicle beside his, though he's not had any issues with either of her replacements. It's nice to see her smiling face greeting him as he shoves his bag into a locker and swings the door shut.

"Hey there, Mulligan," she says.

His hugs for her are longer than they are for most other people. He can gather her up entirely in the circle of his arms and she loves it. His hugs for her might be longer than is entirely appropriate in most work environments, but there's a bond formed over caring for the near-dead and dying that defies etiquette. There's also the fact that he's never given a single shit for what anyone else thinks about him. It's mostly that.

"Busy night tonight," she says.

Peggy takes the elevator up from the emergency department; her train drops her off just half a block from the entrance there. He tried it once- coming in through ED. It has been years since he was working as a fresh-faced, eager-eyed young nurse in emergency, and the only thing he could report back to Peggy that night was how nice it was to recognise that he didn't miss a second of it. The trolleys lining the hallway are smattered with blood and faeces. The endless stream of tired, waiting patients, and even more exhausted doctors, pushing through the sliding doors at all hours. Collared faces with vacant stares fixating on the ceiling, while other wild and desperate eyes darting frantically around the room, searching for some form of respite as their hands strain against padded shackles. But, at any rate, Peggy always knows when it's going to be a busy night.

There's a lot of assumptions made about Hercules, based on his height and the breadth of his shoulders, the colour of his skin. Similarly, there's a lot of assumptions made about Peggy. But, they both know that Peggy's always been the stronger one of the pair. 

Hercules enters the ward through the waiting room, just as he's done almost every night he's worked in the Valley Forge ICU these past seven years.

"It's good to see your face," he says.

Though her eyes are sharper, quicker, less naive to the world, the rounded softness of her cheeks has remained. She's added streaks of deep red to her curls, twirled up into a tight bun on top of her head. It's the kind of shade that might have looked cheap on someone else but, as she stands there in the tea room, deep blue scrubs, cocky smirk and one perfectly manicured hard resting at her hip, Peggy looks pretty damn fantastic.

It's reassuring to think that some things don't change.

They walk out onto the floor together, joining with the rest of the trauma night shift for the evening handover. Peggy hauls herself up onto the desk, legs swinging as she pulls out her phone to show Eliza a photo of her daughter with a strawberry pink beanie pulled down over her curls. Eliza faces lights up into a smile into dainty dimples that grace the corners of her lips. How she manages to start and end each night beaming positivity, he will never understand.

"There's a new nurse starting on trauma tonight," she says, pointing out an unfamiliar face framed by long black hair, standing quietly, patiently amongst the throng of scrubs.

"Remind me to drop by and check that she's getting along okay," she adds.

He agrees, but it's unlikely that Eliza will forget. She's prone to remembering those kind of things- who needs an extra hand with turns, who has bad knees and won't be able to take external referrals that require running down the back stairs. Sometimes, as he catches her beaming smile, he wonders why it is that she takes so many night shifts, at least as many as Peggy does. Then he remembers that not all scars are visible, and he reminds himself to always smile back, reflecting as much of her brilliance as he can.

Hercules accepts the ward list from Martha, with a murmured thanks,before she's hurriedly gathering their attention to begin. He has always admired her commanding voice, her clear and specific instructions, her dynamic mind, but he doesn't envied her job.

They read down the list, as Martha announces any important information notes from the afternoon staff, as well as tasks to be completed overnight. There's a few cardio cases which have the potential to be difficult to manage overnight, but Martha's more concerned about the three new trauma cases; one stabbing and two victims of a motor vehicle accident. Quite right, too. The first night for trauma cases is often an unsteady one. As he scans over the list, he's unsurprised to see that one of them has been allocated to his newly empty cubicle.

"Oh, they're married," Peggy says.

She's right. She's on 24 and he's on 25, slotted into spots beside each other on the list as they are on ward, and in the first column it's easy to spot their matching last names. It could be a coincidence, but he's somewhat sure that, this time, it's not. The words that follow in the rest of the boxes, listing the mechanism of injuries, imaging results, past medical history- they all vary slightly between the two beds, but at the same time, they tell an intertwined story. His gaze flicks back to the patient information on the left, the string of letters leaving him frowning slightly. Medical terminology is one thing to conquer, but English is the first and only language he's ever known. Hercules mouths the unfamiliar words silently as he reads-

"Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates daily!  
> Leave any questions, thoughts, comments below :D  
> Fair warning that, while I will try to maintain medical accuracy, the depiction of nursing jobs and logistics of hospital/ICU management will mostly likely result in many mistakes, so apologies to any healthcare professionals reading!


	2. there's nothing that your mind can't do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot to learn about Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette.

Over the next two hours, Hercules learns a lot about Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette.

He learns that Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette was crossing the road with his wife just after five in the afternoon, when a large black car came hurtling through the intersection. He learns that Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette was seen by eyewitness to fly at least three meters through the air, landing near the pavement, and that the car that struck them pulled up to a halt, the driver in tears and apologetic as he began CPR, yelling at the pedestrians around him, begging someone to call an ambulance.

He learns that Gilbert Marquis du Motier de Lafayette arrived with his wife, Adrianne, from Paris only two weeks ago. When they'd first brought him in, no one knew who he was, or that it was his wife on the gurney beside him.

He learns that Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette had his appendix taken out as a child, if the location of the old scar is evidence enough to go by, and there’s something that looks suspiciously similar to a gunshot wound, almost entirely healed over, on the back of his left leg. Even if they’re having some difficulties locating any medical records, the reams of blood tests and initial trauma scan sequences haven't detected anything other than a healthy, young man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s usually how it is, for those who end up in the beds here - bad fucking luck.

He also learns that Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette painted his toe nails with bright purple polish. He spots it almost immediately, as he lifts up the sheets to check for pedal pulses. The sight confuses him for a second, it seems so out of place here; vibrant against the white of the sheets. Whoever did it, him or his wife or someone else entirely, knew what they were doing. It's a beautiful job. He must have done it fairly recently too, the lacquer extending neatly along the edges of his nails, right down to the cuticle.

"Man, you have a long ass name," he informs Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette some hours later, as he slowly combs the blood from his springy curls. The tendrils are matted together, shaved off along the front where the ventricular drain was inserted, but massing together everywhere else. It seems too cruel to just cut the curls away, most times they do their best to salvage as much humanity as they can manage, given the state most patients arrive in. Hercules is particularly good at saving hair. Call it a personal skill.

He fills a plastic bucket with warm water, spots the floor around the pillow with towels and, slowly, steadily, sets to work separating apart each spiralling curl. It's slow work, but it's incredibly satisfying as he manages to detangle the entire left third. There's a larger knot on the right side he may have to concede to chopping off, but he's determined to put up a good fight on Lafayette's behalf.

"I hope you don't mind if I just call you Lafayette," he adds, fingers slotting between the dark tresses, "Your name might be very elegant, but it's very long, and I'm only here twelve hours at a time, Lafayette. We gotta make the most of them."

Sometimes, visiting staff ask them, the ICU nurses and doctors, why they talk to patients who are so deeply sedated. Surely, they reason, even if they could hear you, the amnesic effects of the medications mean that nothing you're saying will be remembered. Surely, they argue, it's easier to work without muttering aloud to yourself all night long.

The visiting families never ask why he talks to the patients. They never do.

When they designed the ward, they installed glass between the cubicles which could be switched from transparent to opaque with a simple switch. It makes things easier when they have to cover breaks or drug runs, with privacy and intimacy returned to the patient and their family within seconds if required. Hercules and Peggy usually keep their glass transparent, if not just to exchange weary grins across their gloved hands as they steadily, surely work through their hourly tasks.

New admissions always have more to do, naturally. He makes his notes as he goes, carefully handwritten on the lined paper he keeps in a well-stocked stack beside his computer. He’ll type them up once he’s finished. It’s always easier to paint a clearer picture of a patient once you have more of the story in your hands.

The medical review comes around early on, new trauma patients an obvious priority. John’s on tonight, and his assessments are nothing if not thorough. He greets Hercules with the same generosity and warmth as ever, barely coming up to the taller man’s shoulder, but commanding due respect nonetheless. John is one of the youngest attendings on the ward, but he’s more than earned his place as one of the team, just as he’s wormed his way into the hearts of all those who work with him. He takes even longer with Adrianne than he does with Lafayette, before hurrying away to see the stabbing victim who’s just returned from the operating theatre.

Peggy takes the first break.

While she's gone, Hercules pulls his chair out into the passageway between the two rows of beds, so that he can easily see both patients, both screens. He takes the opportunity to have a closer read of Adrianne's notes, scanning through operation notes and scan results. He learns a few things about Adrianne de Lafayette as he goes.

Adrianne de Lafayette is four years younger than her husband, but was also born in Paris. She was hit first by the car, and there’s a note from the paramedics as to whether that was an intentional attempt on her part, to step in front of her husband. It’s a strange thing for the ambulance notes to include, too personal, too insignificant to their care. But it’s there, scrawled in hurried handwriting in front of him.

Adrianne de Lafayette is anaemic, but it’s hard to say if it’s a normal variation of the spectrum of possible haemoglobin levels, or a more concerning sign of early sepsis, or the inevitable result of the heavy internal bleeding that’s been ongoing since the accident. Her surgery seems more complex than her husband’s, but there are so many different teams weighing in on the range of injuries she’s sustained, it’s hard to accurately to interpret the many different plans and conclusions into any kind of sense.

But then he spies the neurosurgical ward round from earlier in the day, Jefferson's loopy handwriting covering two whole pages, and shifts his attention to the bottom of the note, reading their working diagnosis. His heart sinks.

Adrianne de Lafayette's traumatic brain injury is likely unsurvivable.

 


	3. this one's mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But first, let's take a break.

Eliza smiles beguilingly at them from the other side of the room, tells Hercules and Peggy to let her know if he needs anything from the drug room, as she'll be going soon. Hercules is all good for the moment, but tells her thanks anyway. Sometimes it's easy to forget to say thanks for all the little things people do for you overnight, but he's trying to remember.

She shouldn't have worried about remembering to catch up with the new nurse, they've been paired up together for her first shift, and are both looking after bed 27, the young burns victim from downtown. That makes sense, given they have a spare bed, and Eliza is the perfect pair of hands to guide any newcomers into a successful transition into ICU. Even Kitty likes her, and Kitty can't stand anyone.

Moving to a new ward is confusing enough, each with its own sense of order and organisation, but given the brand spanking new lanyard and photo ID, and the fact that Peggy's fairly certain she's never seen her at any of the interdepartmental Friday night drinks at The Bay, they're probably looking at someone who's just stared at Valley Forge altogether. There's a scant orientation session that's compulsory for all new staff, but unless it's had a drastic makeover since Hercules completed it, there's very little practically useful information contained in it. Mostly, it covers where you're not allowed to park and how to get in contact with payroll if you're having issues with the online logging system.

He tags out with Peggy once she's back and makes his way to then tea room, pulling out half a sandwich and a Diet Coke, and settling into one of the old, threadbare couches. The TV is left on as per usual; tonight it's showing scenes from an old sitcom that Hercules never got around to watching, but even without the sound on, he can tell he wasn't missing out on much. Instead, he scrolls mindlessly though his phone, checking his regular news sites, replying to a message from his younger brother, transferring some money out of his savings account in anticipation of the bills which are due to arrive later this week.

He also downloads an English to French translation app. This is justified, he reasons, by the fact that it is free and he's always wondered what Angelica and Jefferson were saying to each other in scathing, lowered tones, both obnoxiously bilingual without any consideration for those around them who'd love a chance to listen in on their on and off tumultuous relationship drama. There's every possibility that Lafayette doesn't understand a word of English.

The allocated twenty minutes flies by effortlessly, and before he knows it he's back on his feet, tossing the can into the recycling bin on the other side of the couch, punching the air in silent victory as it lands squarely inside the plastic container, and heading back out onto the floor.

On his way back, he stops by bed 27. Eliza is carefully reapplying a silver dressing to the burns on Lee's upper arm, her shadow hovering beside her, watching carefully.

"Hey, I'm Mulligan, how are you going?" He offers her his hand in greeting, ignoring the pointed looks from the other side of the wing. If Peggy can somehow manage to watch both their patients and monitors, and still spy on their interaction, that's her prerogative.

"Hi, I'm Maria." She shakes his hand with a slow smile. Her hesitance is understandable, but something about her perfectly painted face, her nail edges evidently nibbled away, the slight widening of her eyes at the sound of a cleaning trolley rattling around the corner, leaves Hercules more curious than he intended to be.

"And okay? I think? Eliza's been a real angel." The way her eyes light up towards the woman beside them is far more genuine, but Eliza waves it away, a pleased flush falling over her cheeks.

"First shift's always the hardest, you'll get the hang of things in no time," she says.

Hercules ruffles the top of Eliza's head as he passes, chuckling warmly at her resulting pout, and heads back to Lafayette.

"Nothing much happened while you were out," Peggy confirms, "I sent off a gas from the arterial line."

She shows him the printed off results. They're bad, but largely unchanged from the one he'd taken an hour earlier, which is more important for now, all things considered.

"Thanks," and he means it, he can always rely on Peggy to keep an eye on his patients without a qualm. "How's she doing?"

Peggy pauses in her attempt to recalibrate the potassium infusion and reaches down to pat Adrianne's hand gently.

"You're a brave one, I'll give you that. Making some epic tidal volumes over here." She turns back to the infusion pump, her back to both Adrianne and Hercules, but continues talking-"Still, she's giving me nothing neuro though- she's pretty heavily sedated."

Hercules hums in agreement. So is his Lafayette. The powerful cocktail of Propofol, Fentanyl and Cisatracurium constantly pumping into his veins is enough to ensure he'll be still and silent, despite the intrusive procedures and constant examination that would usually provoke some level of response, even from patients with more extensive brain damage. They'll both stay like that for a few days, medically sedated and paralysed, trying to minimise any further swelling or injury, trying to keep a hold on the delicate pressures building within his skull. It's the toughest time for visitors, not knowing how someone is going to wake up, but knowing they have to wait patiently before they can even hope to glimpse at the outcome.

Then again, there's no one coming to visit Adrianne and Gilbert de Marquis De Lafayette.

He carefully tapes the blood gas results into a free page in the bedside folder, sitting down at the chair in the corner of his cubicle to start a fresh set of observation recordings for the hour. Glancing back across the room, he catches sight of Maria, mouth puckered as she carefully draws up saline for her next infusion.

There's something in the way her every movement is so focused, so intentional, almost rehearsed.

He'll have to keep a close eye on that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tea breaks are *important*, and so are good ward buddies!


	4. could i grant you peace of mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where they'd be calling her next of kin. But he's already in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how this is going in regards too ? too medical ? too much prose  
> But updates are happening and I'm enjoying writing it very much, so looks like we're in it for the long haul!

To the untrained eye, Lafayette might look exceedingly unwell.    
  
It's difficult to ignore, of course, the rather large and unavoidably crude looking steel rods, fixing his pelvic and left femur fractures externally, until he's stable enough for the Orthopaedic team to come and pin them in theatre. And the beige, padded collar fixed around his spine, as there was too much interference on the initial X-Ray to exclude the possibility of a cervical spine fracture. And the bandages plastered across his freshly shaved forehead, complete with tube draining brain fluid out into a tiny, plastic bag.   
  
There's enough there to make a rather frightening picture of poor health. But for someone who went toe to toe with six thousand pounds of speeding metal, really, he looks pretty good.    
  
From what Hercules has seen, from what he knows, the biggest risk with a patient like this is that there's something small, a little laceration, a creeping sign of infection, that goes unnoticed for long enough that it can take a firm grip and rip apart all the careful work of the surgeons who've been so busily focused on the bleeding brain or unstable lungs, that they've completely missed the more sinister, more deadly culprit. Hercules would love to say that that's never happened under his watch, but after working with such sick patients for so long, he'd have to be either a genius, or taking way too much sick leave, not to make enough unconscious errors in his best attempts to provide good care. He's had his fair share of fated cases.    
  
So he's cautious, very cautious, that Lafayette is lying there innocuously, looking so damn fine, all things considered. Particularly given that his poor wife is lying only meters away, fighting for her life and looking worse by the hour.    
  
Poor Peggy, this isn't what she should have come back to, not on the first shift. But she's tough, and experienced to boot. She knows when to make small adjustments on her own and when to call John with a message to-    
  
"Get your pretty ass here on the double, she's trying to make me look bad and we can't have that!"    
  
Dr John Laurens is remarkably pretty. He has dainty wide set eyes, like a painted picture, and too many freckles to be deemed reasonable, but they're there nonetheless, sprawled across his cheeks, scattered along his neck and peeking through the sleeves of his scrubs. He talks with the manners of someone raised under a household where etiquette was a matter of pride, he practices medicine with rigour and focus, but he smiles with a delightful boyishness and a careful, curling widening of his lips is enough to cause pause for any who catch its rays.    
  
Hercules isn't stupid, he knows that most men don't pride themselves on being pretty, with _handsome_ , or even _gorgeous_ , as far more desirable descriptors, and he'd never be one to confront a friend with the burden of an intimate endearment they'd never asked for from him, so it's not something he'd really tell John to his face.    
  
But it's true. He's ridiculously pretty.    
  
He's also pretty worried about Adrianne.    
  
So is Peggy, which combined with Jefferson's opinion (however vacuous and vain the man may be, he is a good neurosurgeon), essentially guarantees a sad ending to her story. That doesn't mean she's cared for any less. That doesn't make it any less hard.    
  
They pull the curtains and, at Peggy's instruction, John looks over the area of marbled, purple skin. There's some blistering there that's definitely new, and even if her temperature hasn't hit critical yet, it's been creeping up slowly, causing Peggy alarm.    
  
"It's a good thing you thought to check it out," he says to her, scanning over the latest set of blood results and pulling out his phone. Hercules hears no witty reply. It must be bad.    
  
Even if it's the middle of the night, it's never truly quiet on the trauma ward. Patients injuries have no care for what number has been designated to the current relative direction of the sun. The vascular and infectious diseases teams are there promptly, discussing what to do next in unnecessarily hushed tones. There are no visitors, not tonight.    
  
Peggy eventually leaves their huddle and falls back heavily into her chair, exhaling low and slow.    
  
"Necrotising fasciitis," she says.   
  
"You're kidding," he says. She's not.    
  
Within minutes they are bundling Adrianne up for transport, calibrating the portable ventilator, packing a bag of drugs they hopefully won't have to use in transit to the operating theatre- but Hercules turns his back to the commotion, frowning unhappily as he spies a spike in Lafayette's heart rate.    
  
"Hey, what's this?" He switches the screen to a more detailed view of his electrical trace, watching the spikes and dips carefully, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of defect. His heart is just racing.    
  
Hercules pulls his chair up next to the bed. He takes his hand.     
  
"Any other time, I can bet it would be you I'd be calling around now, letting you know your wife was going back to theatre. I can't work out if you'd be the kind to freak out and yell at me over the phone, or maybe you'd be already here, by her side-" he pauses, not expecting Lafayette to respond allowing him the chance to anyway.    
  
"Yeah, that seems more your kind of thing," he says. "So, here's what I'd tell you, right about now. I'd sit you down somewhere, so you'd stop pacing, so I could look you in the eye. And I'd tell you that your Adrianne has a bacterial infection in the soft tissue underneath her skin, just above her knee. She's gotta have her leg opens up so they can clear away the infected parts, so it stops spreading. Sounds nasty but the surgeons do know what they're doing, the problem with this kind of infection is when it's missed, but luckily we've got Peggy looking after her."

Behind him, a multi-legged throng of experienced hands amass Adrianne's bed from every side, wheeling her out of the cubicle. Hercules gives Lafayette's hand a small squeeze. 

"Don't you worry about her for now, okay? You gotta be worrying about yourself until you're a bit better. Then you have my permission to go leaping out of bed and escorting her to whatever's going on."   
  
The beeping of the monitor is still erratic, even if the numbers flashing beside the trace show that it's slowed slightly. The crowded escort finally clear the corner and exit the wing. Hercules reaches into his back pocket to pull out his phone. He opens the translation app, but is momentarily stumped by the notion of what phrase to enter into the blinking box. After a moment of contemplation, he begins to type with his free hand. 

"Ah, okay you'll have to be patient because this isn't really my thing." He clears his throat, peering at the breakdown of sounds italicised next to the French phrase on his screen. 

“Ner,  _ ne vus _ en-quiet; en-quiet-ez?” He stumbles over the unfamiliar groupings, trying to move his mouth around the new sounds. “En-quiet-ez pars.” 

There’s a polite cough from behind his shoulder, and he turns, one hand still holding Lafayette. Eliza actually looks embarrassed, if anything, but when she speaks, her tone is clear and the sounds are clearly enunciated. 

“ _ Ne vous inquietez pas, tout va bien _ ,” she says. He beams up at her.

“I didn’t know you spoke french!” The words sound right rolling off her tongue, and she moves to stand beside him, pointing out different parts of the phrase. 

“Say it almost like you have a blocked nose,  _ ne _ , and then  _ anh-kwi-et _ and the end of ‘pas’ is almost silent, like an afterthought you don’t quite get to.” Eliza is patient, and has Hercules repeat the first half of the phrase several times after her, correcting the nuances of each sound. 

“ _ Ne vous inquietez pas, tout va bien _ ,” she says. 

Lafayette’s hand is still and lifeless in his. But it’s warm. And, slowly, steadily his heart rate settles back into a normal range.

“ _ Ne vous inquietez pas, tout va bien _ ,” he says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google translate is excused by Hercules using google translate. Nice.  
> (Please excuse my super Australian phone :P)


	5. where is my son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They brought him in just half an hour ago.

They bring Phillip Hamilton in on Tuesday night.

“A school night,” Hercules muses aloud to Lafayette, as he swabs some of the secretions away from around the tube pressed between his lips, “Not that he’s gonna be stressing about that now.”

While taking care of someone unconscious, things are noticed about them that normally wouldn’t necessarily be seen as important. For example, Lafayette has the kind of teeth which seem to Hercules to be the kind which were brushed at least twice a day. He isn’t about to let the team down, not now that he’s the only one who can do any brushing. He cleans Lafayette’s mouth up carefully, given he didn’t have time to give it proper attention last night. Sometime later in the week he’ll have another go at his hair, but at the moment it’s still nicely secured in its braid.

Washing out the toothbrush and plastic kidney dish in the sink, Hercules checks Lafayette’s vitals again- they all good and stable, intracranial brain pressures settling nicely since they last moved him. He rolls his chair back to a spot where he can keep an eye on the screen yet still lean over and punch Peggy gently on the arm.

She punches him back, less gently, but he can take it.

“Maybe you can do Adrianne’s hair next,” she says, “Seeing as you have so much spare time.”

The surgery was successful, or so the surgeons informed Peggy several hours later. Adrianne’s leg is still swathed in several layers of bandages, so it’s impossible to see how bad the resulting damage might be, but according to Peggy’s research, the fact that they even attempted debridement and didn’t consider amputation means that the infected area can’t have been too extensive.

“They keep saying how lucky it was that I caught it so early,” she frowns, “As if it has anything to do with luck. As if anything about all of this is _lucky.”_  

He nods quietly, considering her words. Rarely is a surgeons intricate work praised as lucky. Luck has nothing to do with Peggy’s keen eye and low tolerance for suspicious symptoms. But, then again, in his opinion, luck has everything to with every step of the process that’s brought the two Lafayettes to where they’re lying now, side by side in every sense of the tragedy. It’s a matter of luck, just not very good luck.

“Any word on what he’s in for?” He angles his head back over to where Eliza is beginning her assessment. The newly filled bed means that Maria is caring for Lee alone, but she did a good job last night by all accounts, and they’re all keeping an eye out for any sign that she needs a hand. They’d said as much to her face, but in Hercules experience, the newest members are the least likely to speak up and solicit assistance, with the most skilful of nurses more likely to recognise the need for extra help and duly ask for it.

Peggy shrugs.

“He’s come in under trauma, just out of theatre. Nineteen years old, even if he doesn’t look it, tiny thing.”

Before they can speculate anymore, a rowdy commotion at the end of the room halts their conversation. With a quick, understanding look exchanged with Peggy, Hercules rises to his feet, well aware of the effect that a taller, wider presence can have on disruptive patients or family. But the last thing he expected to see on this Tuesday night is Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, pushing past the massing police officers and nurses, hands flying, eyes wide, shouting loudly again and again-

“Where is my son!”

Phillip _Hamilton_. He should have picked up on that one. Hence the police.

Secretary Hamilton comes hurtling down the aisle, and it’s all Hercules can do to step out of his path. For a short, scrawny man, he’s faster than he looks. Swinging into cubicle 26 after him, Hercules nearly runs into the politician, who’s faltered to a sudden stop at the sight that greets him. 

“ _Phillip_?”

Phillip Hamilton does not look well. Not at all.

His sheets are still stained with bloody streaks, splattered behind him in a dispersing supanova of deep red, centring around a newly cleaned and dressed abdominal wound. Everybody looks strangely fragile in hospital gowns, their knees sticking out from just below the starched cotton edge, wide arms billowing around their elbows. But Phillip looks terrible, tiny; a lost child mistaken for a man, he seems to take up no space in the bed. His lips and cheeks are ashen, almost grey in contrast to the white pillow behind him. Alexander scrambles to his side, seizing his son’s hand in two of his own, grasping desperately, muttering his name in mumbled prayer.

Eliza pulls Hercules out of the room, closing the curtains around father and son, allowing them a moment of privacy.

“It was at university, at a rally, he was speaking and, oh god how does this even still happen,” Her voice is carefully quiet, but her frustration and distress leaks through nonetheless, “Someone in the audience had a gun.”

Hercules takes in a short, sharp breath. She doesn’t wait for him to reply.

“They patched him up, of course, and he’s in the best place he could be, but they had to take out his spleen and a considerable chunk of his liver – it’s a miracle that it missed his aorta or IVC, I had a look at the images before they brought him across. He’s stable now, but-” She tucks her hands beneath her armpits. “His fight isn’t nearly over.”

“Infection?” Hercules inquires, as he takes a look at the operation notes. Eliza was right. The bullet’s made a messy track through his abdomen. She makes a small noise of affirmation.

“They’ve got him on some broad coverage, it’ll be a while before the cultures come back.” She gives him a look as he passes the notes back to her. “I’ll do my best to explain the extent of his injuries to his father, but someone needs to get Laurens down here soon; it doesn’t look good.”

And to think that Hamilton had made a speech condemning the current gun laws, not two weeks ago.

Talk about luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missed updates for a couple of days due to sickness but should be right back to it now! And so, Mulligan is introduced to the Hamiltons.


	6. in the place to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phillip never hurt a soul; he must have been so scared..

Phillip Hamilton is stable, for now. So are the Lafayettes. But none of them are anywhere near to good health, and Lee is still running temperatures and losing fluids far too quickly, Maria administering bag after bag of replacement liquids, alternating between saline and blood as per John’s orders. But, at the very least, three of the four patients down their end of the trauma wing are stable. It clears them up a little to take breaks in an organised fashion, Hercules covering Peggy, who catches up with Eliza quickly before ducking out for a cigarette. It’s been a while since any of them bothered trying to convince her to quit.

There are rooms where family meetings are meant to happen, with locked doors and tissue boxes ready for use, and most doctors try their best to lure families into those secure spaces to tell them more about what’s happened, or what’s about to happen. But Alexander Hamilton seems reluctant to leave his son’s side, so John’s opted to take him to the small space at the end of the ward, which is hardly private, but will suffice. The night is still dark outside, but the ward is always well lit, illuminating their faces as John begins to explain the injuries and what can be expected to happen in the next few hours and days. Even if Hercules doesn’t intend to listen in on their conversation, Alexander doesn’t appear to have much sense of hushed tones.

“-and besides all that, he lost a lot of blood,” John is explaining, “We’ve given him two units of replacement already, but he might need more before the night is out.”

“But you have enough to give him, right?” Alexander asks, as if that may be the only thing limiting his successful recovery. If only it was so simple.

John nods. “We have excellent supplies, of everything that Phillip might need. But the bleeding is only one problem.”

“What else do you need?” Alexander demands, hands on his hips, “Tell me and I’ll make it happen.”

There’s a pause, and Hercules doesn’t have a clear view of John’s face, but he can see the exhaustion and desperation in Alexander’s eyes, and wonders how John manages to have these conversations on a daily basis without cracking under the pressure of having to tell so many different people, different families, just what they might be about to lose. Even if they already know the situation is bad, it’s understandable that it’s tempting to cling onto impossible hopes, and sometimes it’s up to John to be the one to stepping to dispel false optimism. But at least, this time, it’s still early days.

“He needs time. He needs to heal and recover from the damage, both of the initial injury and the surgery.” John’s hand reaches forward to rest on Alexander’s shoulder and Hercules frowns. John’s not usually one for physical contact. But it’s clear to see how Alexander softens under the connection, shoulders falling in acceptance. “Give him time, Mr Hamilton. He’s in the best place he could be right now, all things considered. Let us look after him.” 

Once Alexander has retreated back behind the curtains around 26, John makes his way over to Hercules. He’s already checked in on both Adrianne and Lafayette earlier this evening – and paused to point out how unhelpful it was for Hercules to nickname his patient with a name similar to the two patients, to Peggy’s delight, she’d already pointed this out more than once – but does a cursory check of the skin around Lafayette’s fixations and listens to Adrianne’s abdomen. She has a brewing infection that they’re covering with antibiotics, but even with their strongest attack, it will be a while before it clears.

“They’re doing okay.” He confirms to Hercules. He looks tired. “They’ll probably take Adrianne back to theatre tomorrow, just in case they missed anything on the first exploration of her leg, but Madison seemed pretty happy with her work.” 

Hercules offers him a chocolate from the bag he’s stashed in his top drawer.

“What about Phillip?” He enquirers. 

“Too early to say,” John replies. “Did you know that he was in the middle of speaking about better government funding to public health services when he was shot?” 

Hercules didn’t, but he’s not surprised, and says as much. He knows his fair share about the politicians of their country, and Alexander Hamilton has set quite a legacy; his only son would be primed to follow in his footsteps. But there’s a lot more that a Cabinet member can do to invoke change, as compared to a first year university student, fresh out of school, imbued with idealism and hope. It’s easy to remember how simple the world seemed back then, back when he’d just stepped out of the sheltered shadows of school, into a world of innovation and possibility, where it seemed inevitable that the massed voices of students would be heard, that their unified outrage and beliefs could be the very thing that would tip a moment into a movement. With time, of course, he’d learned that it wasn’t so simple. Phillip probably hadn’t come to that moment of dull realisation yet.

“Kind of awfully ironic, don’t you think?” John says.

Hercules doesn’t have a reply to that. He still doesn’t know if there are words to reflect the helplessness of the situation minutes later, once John’s been called off to another bag and Peggy’s returned, stinking of smoke and chattering from the cold night’s air. He fills her in on the update. They open up a search of Phillip Hamilton and are surprised to find that he wasn’t shirking under the shadow of his father, not in the slightest.

He was, in fact, in his second year of university, after graduating school early with top marks. He ran a blog which spoke out against racial discrimination by police, against criminalisation of sex workers, against the closure of local homeless centers. Peggy pauses over that last page, reading his words carefully. Hercules knows a little of her history, knows that she knows all too well the dangers of living on the street.

Phillip writes well, perhaps a little too many words in each phrase, too many exclamation points, but his intention is good. He highlights the groups most at risk, those with mental health issues, women fleeing abusive families – his work is well researched. He references his own father’s speech on providing better access to psychological centers for immigrants without shame. He’s proud of his father’s work, and his own, it would seem.

Peggy’s eyes are glassy as she finally closes the web page to get back to work.

“Well, fuck guns,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mes amis! Thank you for the lovely comments on the last chapter, and for everyone who left kudos :D I'm glad to see people are enjoying (or, at least, getting sad over) this little story! 
> 
> I was planning on writing this whole story (which has about 45 chapters loosely planned in my mind) from Hercules perspective, but now that I've started, there's a few plots and scenes that are just begging to be written with a view from the others! Particularly Maria and John.. what do you think? 
> 
> Until tomorrow! xx


	7. until he caught a bullet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.

John comes around again, maybe an hour before their shift is over. He carefully checks over both Adrianne and Lafayette – and yes, that name is stuck now, no matter how much Peggy complains that it doesn't make sense and that Gilbert is a perfectly usable option – methodically reading over the test results and vital signs before giving them a tick for the night. There’ll be more work for the day team to do, to pursue what needs to come next in their plan, what else needs to be fixed, but for now, they’re on track.

It’s John's last night shift of the block, he’ll have one day off before three days of regular hours work, and then another four of nights. It doesn’t seem like enough rest time to Hercules, the shift between day and night shifts is more draining than it sounds – there’s a reason he only works one side of the equation in a rather permanent fashion. But John manages, as do all the other doctors, and as long as they keep managing and keep their patients well, no one is keen to do anything to change the way things run. Certainly not if that means employing more doctors, as far as the powers-that-be are concerned. He’s heard some interesting rants from Angelica on the matter over the years, that’s for sure. John doesn’t complain in the same way, he saves his energy for other matters.

He may not realise that Hercules has access to his twitter feed, but in his own, private way, he’s quite proud of the projects John promotes, using his voice as a doctor to give gravitas and attention to matters that might otherwise go unnoticed.

“But he’d never bring any of that up at work,” Hercules tell Lafayette once John has left them, adjusting the oxygen saturation probe slightly, so that it’s better situated on his long finger, “Not even with Phillip here, our young activist in residence."

There are still two police officers loitering around the end of the trauma wing. That’s hardly unheard of, and some trauma victims brought in to their care are under serious police investigation. This time the presence seems less to do with any unlawful actions on Phillip’s behalf, and more to do with the throng of enthusiastic journalists who can be seen gathering at the entrance of the hospital. It’s times like these that Hercules is glad he takes the back exit to the hospital. He has little time for journalists, particularly those vying after the story of a politically charged shooting. Particularly those chasing the story of a young man struggling for each breath. Bastards, the lot of them.

He pulls the curtain around their bay for some privacy before he lifts the sheets off Lafayette’s legs, purple toes peeping out at him from the end of the compression stockings. A quick test of the warm and softness of his calves confirm that the stockings are doing their job.

“No clots as far as I can tell, good work man,” He informs Lafayette. He feels for the pulses on his feet quickly, ensuring they are still present, before moving to carefully pull the sheets back down, careful not to disrupt the fractured sites. Hopefully, the orthopaedic team will be able to take him into theatre tomorrow, fix the broken bones internally and get rid of those ghastly rods. It will certainly make it a lot easier to keep him clean and infection free.

As he’s moving the sheets, his hand pauses over Lafayette’s left leg. It slips along his grazed skin of his knee and under, to the site of the old scar on the back of his thigh, situated in the break between the stockings and the gown. It’s definitely old, skin calcified and eventually smoothed over with the years, but the knobbed wound is easily felt under his fingers, imperfectly round.

“Now, how did you get this one, my dear Laf.”

He chuckles quietly at his unintentional shortening of his already abridged version of Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette’s name. He doesn’t normally have this problem.

“I hope you don’t mind if I call you _Laf_ , Laf.”

He’ll have to wait and see to find out if he’s committing an unspeakable blasphemy in doing so. He pulls the sheets back down properly, tucking them around the foot of the bed, and pulls his chair close to the bed, opening up the bedside notes to make his comments.

“Maybe you were trespassing on some fancy French estate, without realising that there were alarms set in place to catch rebellious teenagers such as yourself,” He looks up, squinting at the man’s face, trying to imagine him as a scrawny youth. “And then, next thing you know, security's up on you, guns an all. Maybe they were aiming at the ground, just trying to scare you off, but missed and caught the back of your leg. I bet you worked hard to convince your friends that it was fine, that you didn’t need to go to hospital.” He imagines Lafayette with an impassioned voice, compelling and enthusiastic. He is, of course, imagining Lafayette arguing with his young French friends in English, with a humourously heavy French accent, but the theory of the story still stands.

“Or maybe you got caught up in an argument with a friend, a fellow ruffian, which could only be settled by a noble duel.” Considering his long frame, his leanly muscled arms, Hercules adds, “Though I’d have expected you to challenge him to an exchange of swords, rather than a common pistol. Unless you were the type to keep a gun on you, ready for those kind of things. You never know.” 

But Lafayette’s fingernails are clean and his hair is fancy. It’s not likely that he grew up in any form of gun-wielding street gang, or whatever the French equivalent is. But still, it’s fun to speculate nonetheless.

He’d asked the radiologist, on his way onto the ward, if they had found anything in his leg on the trauma imaging from when Lafayette had first come in. They’d confirmed his suspicions – there’s the remnants of a bullet still lodged behind his femur. Given the proximity to the nerve, the radiologist had suggested that it probably would be largely unnoticeable to the man.

“But do you think about it, sometimes?” Hercules asks him, scrawling a signature at the end of his line of text, closing the notes and tossing them back onto the desk behind him. “Do you think about that tiny piece of metal in the back of your leg and how it got there, and if it’s ever gonna leave you?”

There is, of course, no response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to make all the characters passionate activists, I swear! It just keeps happening :P 
> 
> Next up! A chapter from not-Mulligan? Oui oui, mon ami!
> 
> xx


	8. that never used to happen before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maria hadn’t always known that she wanted to be a nurse.

The train shudders to a messy halt at the station. Maria has already moved to the doorway, in anticipation of the massive throng of passengers pressing onto the carriage, the morning rush well and truly underway. Yesterday morning, she’d been caught unawares and had barely made it off the train.

Today, however, she steps lightly onto the concrete platform, swiftly moving clear of the doorway. It’s a perfectly sunny morning, with a gentle and cool breeze brushing past her cheeks, sending her curls flying over her shoulders.

And, even if she looks foolish, after the night they’ve had she just doesn’t care – she raises her arms up to the warm balm of the sunlight, radiating down onto the southern end of the station as if directed uniquely at her. She rolls her arms, facing the insides of her forearms into the warmth, closing her eyes to the bright light and tipping her head back slightly. And, in that moment, she feels unequivocally serene.

Their house is an easy walk away from the station, even without the shortcut across the tiny patch of grass their neighbours try to convince their dogs can pass for park. In light of the delightful weather, and the coming end of summer, she decides on the longer route, and sets off with a bounce in her step.

The new job is hard, but she knew it would be. She'd hoped it would be.

Maria hadn’t always known that she wanted to be a nurse.

Eliza had known she’d wanted to be a nurse from the day she’d seen her mother die in hospital, under the careful care and watchful eye of the nurse looking after her. She’d described it so eloquently to Maria, it was almost impossible to imagine the scene as viewed by a five year old who’d just lost her mother. But, as she was learning, there were many things about Eliza that were delightful improbable.

She didn’t have to tell her about her mother, but she had. Maria had only meant to start conversation, not wanting to mill idly by as Eliza did most of the work. She’d almost been grateful that they’d had full beds today, that she’d had to prove herself and carry her ICU shift alone- but, of course, the image of young Phillip instantly comes to mind, and it’s impossible to feel that there’s anything to be glad about, there.

But, it’s true that she does feel a need to prove herself. As far as she can see, she is the youngest nurse on the trauma ward. Though Peggy seems ageless, she has the calm rage and demonstrative ease of someone who has spent years managing disastrous situations. And there’s no doubting that Mulligan has seen his fair share of trauma in his time.  
Eliza doesn’t make her feel inadequate, not at all. But she does want to prove herself, if only for herself, to prove that it wasn’t a waste of time and money, enrolling in yet another course, yet another debt to pay off.

This time, it would be worth it.

Maria's shoes bend and flex over the cobblestones along the alleyway, each section of paving passing beneath her unnoticed as she reflects on the past twelve hours, on what she'd managed, what she's needed help with. With perhaps seven hours sleep, there would be time for a spot of revision before she took the train in at six, and maybe if she downloaded one of the podcasts Eliza had texted her about, she could listen to that on the ride in, or even on her dinner break, if no one else was in the tea room with her.

Confident with her plan, she rounds the corner to her street with a set jaw and a hopeful grin- which is wiped from her face almost immediately with the sight that greets her.

His truck is still in the drive.

A quick check of her watch confirms what she'd assumed, it's almost eight, well past the time he's normally leave the house. It's a Tuesday. There's no reason he wouldn't be heading in to work, not so far as she can think of, but with the way that her heart is throbbing in her throat and the ground is pounding back, rock hard, against her increasingly speedy footfalls, it's difficult to remember precisely what it was that he'd said to her as she'd left for work the night before.

Had he said that tomorrow was a day off? Maybe a late start? _Damn it_ , why couldn't she remember.

The gate swings open with a startled shriek and she hurries to the front door, pulling her backpack around to retrieve her key from the front pocket. The door opens before she has the chance.

"I thought you said you'd be home by eight," he says.

His voice is so quiet she almost missed the words, but she doesn't miss the questioning angle of his head, the wide, thin smile across his lips, his hand gesturing for her to step inside.

She does.

"Handover ran overtime," she says, carefully looking into his eyes for any sign of anger as she does, "So I had to catch the next train."

He has such beautiful eyes.

"Ah, of course!" He presses a hot kiss into her cheek, his mouth lingering, warm breath on her skin as he adds, "Just let me know next time, okay?"

Maria nods eagerly as he draws back, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

"See you for dinner!" She calls after his retreating form.

The front door slams shut and she takes a long, deep breath of air.

There's still plenty of time to get some rest before she needs to go down to the grocers and get some chicken and vegetables for dinner. But there probably won't be time to do that and some revision- she'll have to make do with some quick reading on the train in. But for the moment, her legs are shaking and her eyelids are drooping, any drop of the enthusiasm tiding her over from the long night had drained away, left out in the balmy sun and scattered across the cobblestones.

For the moment, it's time for bed. She'll worry about the rest later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not Hercules!! (Or Lafayette :P), it's only the start of her story, but we'll definitely be hearing more from Maria and a few others in the future!  
> Hope you enjoyed this instalment, more coming soon :3 thanks to everyone who has commented, kudos-ed or read this so far!  
> Xx


	9. if there's a reason he's still alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hercules takes a different path home to his colleagues.  
> (Tuesday morning; take two)

“The plan is to take him to theatre today,” Hercules rubs the back of his head wearily, “I just heard from the surgeons and they’re going to do the femur and maybe the pelvis, depending on how well he tolerates it.”

"And how's his brain injury progressing?" Sara asks, making note of Hercules handover in the margins of her page. 

"Stable," he says, "Still sedated, pressures keep rising up with movement and sometimes just spontaneously, so we haven't even attempted to wean him down yet." She nods as he's talking, she knows the drill. Keep them still for as long as you think they need to stop the swelling. Then see if they're going to come back to you. This is the trauma ward. This is routine. And Lafayette is stable.

In fact, he's been stable almost entirely since he'd been brought into the ICU. Which is all well and fine, if the risk of infection and bleeding were the only thing that he was worrying about. If someone made a list of his injuries from head to toe and then crossed off everything above the head, Hercules would not be worrying about Lafayette.

He watches the others peel off into the elevator; Peggy walking blind, dangerously preoccupied with her phone, John looking like a dead man walking, the day of rest ahead of him not nearly come soon enough, Maria heeling Eliza's footsteps, her reverence almost palpable. Hercules turns down the corridor that leads him to the back stairs, but can't help looking over his shoulder at the pair of women, shoulder to shoulder, leaning up against the back wall of the elevator as the doors slide close, Eliza managing to fit in a short wave goodbye before they do. He's still not sure what it is about Maria that sets his hair on edge. Eliza adores her, Peggy babies her and John seems happy with her care- but it's undeniable that there's something off, even if two shifts together haven't been long enough for him to work out precisely what it is that is bugging him.

His feet fall heavily down each step, echoing up the stairwell ominously. He doesn't want to be worrying about Maria, or about Lafayette. Worrying doesn't do anything to fix the churning concerns brewing in the back of his mind, it does nothing to help him leave the work behind and get some decent hours of rest, away from the hospital and all the hardships that it brings.

But it's not that easy. He's still thinking about the image he had left up on the screen for neurosurgical review; the ventricles of Lafayette's brain compressed down with the increasing tension of the tissues, the intricate grooves of the cranial tissue losing some of its convolution form in the mad press for space. He can't quite take his mind off what it means, what it will mean in the days to come, not even once he's out of the building. Not even once  the smell of hand sanitiser and coffee, that seems to emanate from the walls of the hospital, has long been replaced by the stench of cigarette smoke from the cluster of nurses at the back door and the fumes of petrol collating along the pavement from the ever growing stream of morning traffic heading into town.

He's still thinking about Lafayette long after he gets home, and he gives up trying to stop the train of thought as he pulls of his scrubs and flops back onto his bed. It’s pointless, really. Hercules knows that he doesn't get to choose which injuries can be pieced back together by modern marvels of technology and which require patience; waiting and watching. But it keeps him up, all the same.

They'll scan his brain again tomorrow. That's the hospital traumatic brain injury protocol and even Angelica understands the importance of following the rules. Sometimes. If she believes that the rules have been written well and are there for a good enough reason. And her standards may be high, but this definitely falls within that prevue and, even if it didn't, it wouldn't be the first time he's argued with her over a patient. After the years together, he'd be comfortable saying that they're good friends, at a stretch, but they’re even better colleagues. They work each other hard. 

So, he reasons, as he lets his eyes slide shut, they'll most likely scan his head tomorrow. Which doesn't mean that they'll learn anything new, except there may be hints or little signs that things are getting worse. Honestly, Hercules can't think of any sign that would emerge from a new CT scan which would hint at things getting better. No news is good news, at this point.

They're just waiting for his brain swelling to slow down so they can wean the heavy sedation they're pumping through his veins. So he can wake up.

Even if Lafayette has only been on ward for two nights, Hercules has a gut feeling that he's gonna be a long stay- he's most certainly gonna be with them for more than one week, whichever way the scan tomorrow leads them. But first, he’s got to go into surgery and get his bones fixed. If Hercules could be bothered opening his eyes, he might be able to check what the time is, and he could probably work out if he’s already in theatre now, or if the procedure should be finished up. When the orthopaedics team had called, they’d been planning to do him first thing.

But Hercules isn’t opening his eyes to check the time. He’s not opening his eyes for anything, by now. There’s no point. What does knowing Lafayette’s current progress in reconstructive theatre add to his dilemma? Nothing. Give a man two perfectly functioning legs, a pristine pelvis and the arms of Thor – none of it is any good if he won’t wake up. 

He’ll worry about that tomorrow, though. After they scan his brain. Maybe they’ll have some more answer then; it would certainly help Hercules sleep better, if nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this ironically sleep deprived after 13 hour shift! Will hopefully write better tomorrow but for now I'm trying to keep to my promise of daily updates for y'all <3 enjoy! xx


	10. three fundamental truth (at the exact same time)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angelica has her rules.

According to Angelica Schuyler, there’s three, distinct categories that basically any situation can be sorted into. Angelica has always liked categories, from the food groups in her fridge to her meticulously colour coded note system. Her hypothesis is that, no matter how subjectively stressed an experience may feel, objectively it must belong in one of the three categories, and by recognising it’s status, it can be more appropriately approached and dealt with, avoiding undue stress when not required, or making a point to hurry along processes when they are called for.

Peggy thinks that her hypothesis is ridiculous.

“Life is full of all kinds of shit,” she says, linking her hands together and tucking them behind her head. “Nothing so neat about it, love.”

But Angelica just laughs, rolling her eyes as she ties up her thick hair into a high bun, well clear of any trouble it could cause in the coming hours. She nudges Peggy aside with her hip on her way to the fridge, taking a long swig of her water bottle before sliding into a slot on the door – she likes her water cold.

“It’s true though!” She insists. “There’s only three ways it can go- not that bad, moderately bad; and really fucking bad.”

But Peggy won’t hear a word of it and they have to agree to disagree as they part for the night to begin.

Angelica can always deal with the things that are not that bad. For example, when she's sitting in the doctors office, swinging her chair back and forth as she scrolls through the early evening blood results, and there's a timid knock at the glass office door, and she looks up to see that John Church will be giving her the handover.

What a _fucking perfect_ way to start off her night shifts.

To be fair, it's not really his fault. It's not hers either. He works the locum roster and is sent wherever they need extra hands, and she works entirely too much for her own good, as Eliza is so fond of reminding her. Given that they'd both decided that they could work without issue at the same hospital, there was an understanding that they were bound to run into each other every now and again.

To be fair, John Church is a lovely guy. Lovely enough that it took three years of their being together, slowly progressing from clandestine meetings in locked on-call rooms, to teetering on the precipice of moving in together, for him to point out that maybe, possible, she wasn't as invested in the long term situation of their relationship as he was.

"I really, really like you," she'd said.

"And I really, really love you," he'd replied.

Then he’d started crying and Angie wanted to say that that had been enough to make her reconsider, she honestly did. But it wasn't. She'd really, really liked him, and that was the trouble of it all.

But, John Church is lovely, and even if his smile still lingers a little too long and he stumbles nervously over some of the phrases as he runs through the list, even if he's sitting a carefully calculated, cautious distance from where she's sprawled in her chair- it's not all that bad, and she knows it.

So next, there's the stuff that's moderately bad; not the end of the world but enough to warrant a little attention, certainly a touch more of her time. Most everything she touches, from the moment she sets foot inside the pale, air-conditioned hallways of the ICU, falls into this category.

Sometimes it’s the patients, like the woman on bypass support who is slowly recovering but is still at a high risk of bleeding. Or the man with delirium in the surgical bay, who keeps trying to pull out his ventilator all on his own and freaking out the staff. She really should just save him the trouble and pull it out herself. Maybe that will be her first job for tonight.

Sometimes it’s the other staff. Like Washington when he’s being pressed to provide beds and doesn’t quite remember what it’s like on the ward, when the patients are in front of you, bleeding and seizing and unfit for transport. Like this new nurse who Eliza trusts far too much and Mulligan doesn’t trust at all. She’ll have to keen an eye on that.

The final category is things that are really fucking bad.

If you think about it hard enough, there aren't too many things that fall into this category. Many people could go about their lives for years and years and never encounter a single thing that would warrant being put on this list, if they were abiding by Angelica's rules. But her rules are unfair and biased, so she'd never force them on someone else. After years of watching families fall apart in her fingers, tugging at the threats that unbind life, she knows that her life dips into the really fucking bad by choice, and she wouldn’t change a second of it.

But sometimes it’s hard.

Mulligan wants a CT brain scan and she agrees with him before the words have finished rolling through his lips. They’re ICU, so the order goes through quickly enough, and before she knows it there’s a call from radiology, letting her know that the films are up and that the radiologist calls. That’s always a bad sign. It’s the first.

Before she can talk to him, however, she gets a call from Mulligan. He informs her that Lafayette is seizing in the corridor and he needs extra paralytics and sedatives, and a pair of more experienced hands down there on the double, before he either drops or throws the phone, and all she can make out is the sound of him bellowing instructions at the junior doctor who was tasks with the job of supervising the patient transfer and didn’t think to bring any emergency medications with him. That’s the second warning sign.

She doesn’t wait for the third.

It takes her less than two minutes to collect up the things she needs and run down to the corridor just outside radiology. Mulligan is managing the situation well, but Lafayette’s intracranial pressures are only building, and without the proper medications to bring them down again, he’s left defenseless. She’ll have to speak to the junior attending about this later. It can’t happen again.

Once Lafayette is stable enough to move, high doses of everything running all at once, she calls back radiology. Then, she pulls her phone away from her ear, selects a new number and makes the call.

Mulligans eyes flicker over to meet hers with a pained expression as they walk, but his attention is mostly directed at the number on the monitor, watching carefully as they round the corner into ICU for any changes. Thank goodness he’s the one who was assigned to the transfer. Most nurses wouldn’t know to call her right away.

A weary voice answers the call.

“What is it Angelica, I’m a very busy man.”

Ugh. She’s always disliked neurosurgeons, but Jefferson is- well. He’s the best. So.

“Wake up your boys. We need an urgent decompressive craniectomy and fast.”

She doesn’t like the way Mulligans eyes snap back to hers as the words come out. But she also doesn’t like what the radiologist found on Lafayette’s brain scan.

It’s really fucking bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more I learn about trauma surgery, the worse it gets for my characters.. ahh well!
> 
> Stay strong Mulligan, we'll be back shortly xx
> 
> P.s. interesting ongoing study if anyone wants to learn more in preparation for tomorrow: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066986/


	11. and every day’s a test of our comradery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows something is wrong the second he gets to Lafayette’s bedside.

He knows something is wrong the second he gets to Lafayette’s bedside.

“Stable throughout the shift, no change from yesterday,” Oblivious to his distress, Kitty reels off the florid list of injuries as if Hercules doesn’t know them all already, as if the list of technological terms are the most important thing to be filling the time with. He’s usually a patient man, but she’s blatantly ignoring the fact that there’s something terribly wrong.

“Has he spiked any fevers?” He interrupts.

Kitty pauses, stuck in the middle of her sentence about the post-operative orthopaedic review.

“No?” She says, but the hesitation is there. She’s just turned to reach for the observations chart as Hercules snatches it out her hands.

“Hey! Mulligan, what the hell?” But he’s not listening to anything other than the steady thrumming behind his ears, beating incessantly as his eyes scan over the document, finger tracing the trajectory of Lafayette’s vital signs over the past twelve hours. There’s something _wrong_ , he knows it, but it’s impossible to pin down what precisely is bothering him so much.

But then he spots it.

At the very end of the page, there’s a chart of the measured intracranial pressures, and they’re trending upwards. Steadily.

“What is this?” Kitty leans over to look at what he’s pointing at, then shakes her head.

“It goes up every time you do anything, You know that, it’s nothing.”

Hercules doesn’t reply. Two steps later he’s by Lafayette’s side, whipping a pen torch from his pocket.

“Hey man, sorry bout this but I gotta check something real quick.”

Using one hand, he pulls up Lafayette’s eyelid and switches on the lights, flashing it back and forth over his eye, before switching over to the other eye and doing the same thing.

He catches Angelica in the cardiac pod. She’s just started her rounds.

“Mulligan,” she sighs, by way of greeting. He catches his breath before starting to speak – Angelica has never been fond of people running, besides when it is absolutely necessary. And if that’s the case

“Lafayette needs a CT brain,” he says.

She’s opening her mouth and he knows that it’s to tell him she’ll come by soon and check him out but, as clearly visible in the tubing in her hand, she’s about to rig up an ECMO circuit for one of the new cardiac patients and she really has to finish this first before the guy desaturates enough to arrest, but-

“No. Whatever you’re about to offer, it’s not good enough. He needs it now.”

Her mouth snaps shut, the words squashed down before she can form them.

“Schuyler, please. His ICP has been creeping up for hours and his pupils are only 2 millimetres and sluggish at best. Please. _Trust me.”_ He knows he’s begging but he doesn’t care. She offers him a hard look, eyes narrowed; but nods.

And he doesn’t relax, but one of the layers of his anxiety is lifted as he can see that she is listening to him, actually listening. He passes her one of the information stickers with Lafayette’s name and patient identification number and she eyes it quickly, before sticking it down along them edge of her scrub top’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” he says.

She waves him away, fingers already flying across the keyboard, bringing up the radiological orders website.

“Go get your Lafayette ready then, whoever they are. If you’re right – and this is me, sitting here, ordering imaging for someone I haven’t even laid eyes on yet – you’re going to need to be ready.”

Hercules doesn’t wait around to ask what she means by that.

Angelica is as efficient as she is brilliant. He’s got the portable ventilator set up and is just transferring across Lafayette’s IV pole when she stops by. There’s a young trainee by her side, who she introduces as Charles. He seems a little too in awe of her every word, a little too cautious as he jots down notes as she's speaking, but he's enthusiastic enough. Between the two of them, they get Lafayette ready and down to the CT machine in record time.

"They're just gonna take some more pictures of your brain, okay?" He warns Lafayette.

The radiologists have them wait to the side, out of the range of the strong radiation of the CT scanner. Hercules and Charles stand side by side as they watch Lafayette roll backwards into the ring of the machine, tubes and lines following behind neatly, not catching on anything, just as planned. Charles pulls out his phone to check something and it’s all Hercules can do not to grumble. He knows it’s a long shift, and that this is hardly the most exciting job for trainees, but it’s important nonetheless.

Generally, the older and wiser the doctor, the most questions they ask. Questions to the people around them, intended to teach, but also questions of their own decisions and actions, questions to the others caring for their patients, always learning and growing. It’s the younger, fresher doctors you have to watch out for. They’re desperate to look knowledgeable, and they are to a certain extent, but they are more cautious to ask, to gather information from those around them, rather than from numbers and books. You never quite know when they're going to let you down.

Charles seems clever enough, and nice enough to boot, but he’s not talking much, and that is never good. That says he’s inexperienced, and that’s not what Hercules needs right now.

But Hercules doesn’t say anything, like a fool. He doesn’t say a word about it, instead watching Lafayette carefully as they transfer him back onto the bed, eyes trained for any change in the vitals that seems beyond reasonable variation. They make it all the way out into the hallway before it falls apart.

“Stop!” He cries out, and they do, though most likely in shock at his loud words, “He’s seizing.”

Lafayette’s eyes have opened, in a macabre mimicry of the action Hercules has tried to elicit from him so many times. But his deep brown eyes are rolling backwards in their sockets, the whites bright against his skin as his limbs begin to tremble and shake under the sheets.

“Right, well this is unexpected.”

Charles moves towards the head of the bed. Hercules is gobsmacked.

“Unexpected? He has a brain injury, this is more than expected.” He moves to hold Lafayette’s hand down by his side, tucking the blanket tightly around his arms, lest they move any more violently and bang against the side of the bed rails. “Get me some Lorazepam, he can’t stay like this.”

Charles pauses, mouthing the drug name after Hercules has said it, then shakes his head. “I just brought bolus doses of the relevant sedatives and some local-“

Hercules has heard enough. He cuts Charles off with a single look, he has at least enough sense to realise he’s made a big mistake, and pulls out his phone.

“Schuyler, ICU.”

"Angelica, I'm with Lafayette in the corridor outside Radiology, he's ICP is 30 and he's seizing, I need some benzos, more Propofol and someone who actually know what-" he drops the phone as he feels the bed move beneath his arm. ”What do you think you’re doing?” This time, he doesn’t hesitate as he hurls the words at Charles.

“We have to get him back!” Charles folds his arms over his chest, shoulders back. If he was trying to look physically imposing, he chose the wrong opponent to attempt it with. Hercules stalks to his side, easily towering over the smaller man as he looks him in the eye.

“We are staying right here, until he stops seizing or we stop him seizing and that’s final!” He moves over to the medications and begins to raise the sedative as much as is safe to do so outside of the ward, keeping a close eye on the monitor as he does so. Charles makes a noise as if he’s about to argue behind him, but Hercules just holds out a single finger in his direction, not moving his gaze away from Lafayette, and the noises stutter to a halt behind him. Luckily, at this time of the evening, the hallways aren't too busy. But the hospital is never entirely quiet. 

Soon enough, Angelica joins them.

“Always, _always_ , bring lorazepam for the TBI, you got that Charles?” She passes the drug to Hercules, who quickly commences the infusion. “Especially on transport. You’ve been with us long enough, there’s no excuse.”

Thankfully, with her, Charles has the good sense not to argue back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no! This doesn't take us much further, but Hercules always needs some love. Next up, Mr Jefferson and his neurosurgical team xx


	12. what did you have in mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas Jefferson has a problem.

Thomas Jefferson has a problem.

He can't pinpoint precisely when it started, which is frustrating enough on its own. Clearly, it's a recent development. Thomas prides himself on precision and immaculacy, and yet he cannot pin down where or when this became a problem.

One of the main issues with this whole situation is that James Madison is a good friend of his, probably his best friend, by mere merit of the fact that he may, in fact, be Thomas' only friend. And, despite what people say about him being a heartless bastard (and his tendency not to argue that point), he really doesn't want to fuck that up.

It never really bothered him he didn't have friends, despite the rest of the world operating on some bizarre system where they felt lost without a constant flow of companions to cater to their insatiable emotional needs. Pathetic, in his opinion. He has his colleagues, his peers. They admired him, learnt from his excellent example. He had intellectual stimulation, physical exercise and, when the occasion presented itself in a desirable enough form, bodies to warm his bed and quench his needs every now and again. Thomas had never had any problems in that arena; he knew he was good looking, but clearly there was something appealing to whoever else he found at the classier bars downtown, something about his confidence and nonchalance that drew in pretty young things and left them unsurprised when he kicked them out before mornings. He had, after all, very early ward rounds to attend to.

But Thomas Jefferson has a problem, and it is this: Thomas Jefferson is getting distracted.

More specifically, he's getting distracted by James Madison. And he can't afford to be distracted. 

It's not as if he can even blame the man in question- James is working quietly and efficiently on a discharge summary, the very opposite of distracting. He's even remembered to take his hayfever medication, so Thomas doesn't have to deal with his sniffling noises every minute or so. It's quiet on the ward, most patients are asleep and the evening nurses know better than to chat and gossip around him, lest they incite his scathing rage.

The problem is that, for whatever reason, Thomas cannot help but be distracted by the stretch of James' neck between the lower border of his dense hair and the blue border of his scrub top. It's a perfect plane of skin that has never particularly grabbed his attention previously, but now- now he finds his gaze drawn to the spot, to the tendons and muscles flickering ever so slightly as James moves his head to one side to check something on the notes, to the way his skin is illuminated in the soft glow of the computer screens light, to the way he can't help but wonder what it might taste like to run his tongue along the skin laid out before him there, and what kind of noises might be elicited from James if he did.

"Well, what the fuck am I meant to do with this."

He says the words aloud, to no one in particular, though James is the only other person within earshot, and he seems accustomed enough to Thomas' muttering that he doesn't even pause at the words, blissfully oblivious to the fact that he is, in fact, the key source of Thomas' misery and confusion.

He is silently tapping away at the discharge summary. Thomas frowns- their resident should really be doing that kind of banal paperwork; if she didn't get it done during work hours, she'd just have to stay late or catch up the next day. That's how he'd learnt, by working hard and putting his education and career firmly first. James wasn't going to help anyone by picking up on the slack.

But then his mind was back to James and his gaze flicked back up to that tantalising stretch of skin along his neck and-

"Damn it!"

This time, James stops his work and looks up.

"Jefferson?"

Thomas swings his eyes up to meet James' curious expression, watching him carefully, barely concealed surprise flickering in the twitch of his lips.

"Yes?" He does his best to sound disinterested but manages to settle somewhere near aloof. That will do.

"Your phone is ringing, is all," James says.

And so it is. How did he not notice that?

As he reaches into his pocket to pull out the vibrating phone, he doesn't watch as James shakes his head fondly, a small smile finally sneaking across his lips as he turns back to the screen. He doesn't.  
Or if he does, he manages to multitask doing so, and flipping open the phone and raising a single eyebrow at the name on the screen, whilst pulling out a piece of paper and a pen, ready to receive news of whatever trauma call or new intake is heading his way.

"What is it Angelica, I’m a very busy man."

Anyone who's calling his number this late should know better than to waste time with pleasantries. At lest Angelica knows what a double shift entails and the amount of coffee required to get through it without losing a few patients on the way. At least Angelica appreciates his work, just as much as he regards her with appropriate esteem.

"Wake up your boys." She sounds as tired as he feels. He should tell her about his new cold press set up. It really makes night shifts to much easier to deal with.

"We need an urgent decompressive craniectomy and fast."

Well, that wakes him up. He takes down a few details, asking precise and pointed questions, and by the time he's off the phone, James has closed down whatever paperwork he was working on, full attention on Thomas.

"Was that one of the trauma patients?"

Thomas nods, scribbling down the last of his notes and sliding off the bench. James follows him swiftly out of the office and they head to the stairwell to make their way to the surgical floor. Sometimes it's just easier to inform the on call staff in person.

"Yeah, male in his twenties, Gilbert du Motier-"

"-Marquis de Lafayette, yeah I know the one."

He's not exaggerating. Thomas looks on incredulously as James pulls out a wad of pages from his back pocket and flips through them until he finds the one he was searching for. He folds back the corner and passes it to Thomas.

"This should make the pre-op briefing a bit easier," he says.

Thomas comes to a halt outside the stairwell, scanning over the page of information; blood results, imaging reports, medical history. It's everything they need to set up, all already nearly typed up on a page.

"When did you do this?" James shrugs.

"We're bound to be referred most of the TBI patients at some point." He scratches his nose with the side of his hand, unaffected by Thomas' baffled stare. "I figured if you have summaries of them all ready to go things can move quicker in terms of.." He trails off, gesturing towards the surgical offices, where department heads and scrub teams are about to be informed of all the specifics they need to know.

Thomas looks back down at the page and then grins at James. He's come a long way since they were in medical school together.

"Thanks," he says, "This is great."

And if he catches the sight of James' pleased smile in the reflection of the glass doors as they stalk past, it doesn't mean anything other than another job well done by his attending. He should be pleased, that's good. It's fine.

Thomas refocuses his attentions to the page in front of him, scanning his eyes across the details as he comes crashing into the office, startling those inside, ready to bark orders and get everything set up for the very delicate operation ahead.

Thomas Jefferson cannot afford distractions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was absolutely no intention to have this ship as a part of this story, but they wouldn't let me write in any other way :P You have a job to do Jefferson! Please.  
> (Hope you guys enjoyed! More soon xx)


	13. we pick and choose our battles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things don't quite go according to plan. Angelica is not satisfied.

Lafayette is stable.

He says those words again and again to himself, like a mantra, like a prayer. And Hercules Mulligan has never been a religious man. What kind of gracious god gives cancer to children, crippling degenerative neuropathies to mothers, stops father’s hearts dead in their tracks before they can even see their children graduate, take away the final years of rest and remembering, as grandparents stumble to even remember their own name, waiting for an oblivion they were promised generations ago? He’s seen too many lives torn apart, too many things that seem so fucking unfair, to believe that there could be a god deciding all these things on their behalf.

Or, if there is a god, then they’re a despicable being, and he wants nothing to do with them besides.

But tonight, Hercules can understand the comfort in repeating words again and again, somehow expecting the yearning fervour behind their meaning to take impact with each reiteration of the phrase –

Lafayette is _stable_.

But he’s not well.

Charles is still there, hovering by the bedside computer, flicking his way through Lafayette’s brain scans as if they’re some kind of magic trick flip book, where if he manages to scroll between the images fast enough, the devastating narrow black ventricles and hazy grey parenchyma, laid out in a banquet of horrors across the different layers of his brains, might just disappear into the abyss of the computer, and their problems would all be over.

If only it were that easy. If only there was something he could actually do to help, other than ensure that all other aspects of Lafayette’s care are attended to meticulously and pointedly ignore Charles, which seems to be effectively infuriating him as intended, while waiting for Angelica to return from her meeting with Jefferson.

Hercules is sure that other things are happening on the ward, even in the cubicles around him. But he can't bring himself to draw his attention away from Lafayette, even for a moment. 

Peggy will have to get someone else to cover her break. Though, from what he’s seen, she’s staying by Adrianne’s side for now. She’s stable, too.

He’s been meaning to ask Eliza about Maria, ask Eliza about Phillip, ask her if having the Treasury Secretary sleeping slumped in a chair beside her as she works is a bizarre experience, and all those questions are still rattling around in his mind, taking space he never asked them to fill, but he just doesn’t have time for them tonight.

He has to make sure Lafayette is ready to head off to theatre any minute.

But when Angelica comes back, she’s looking pissed off.

“What did Jefferson do now?” He asks, the second she’s within earshot.

The smarmy asshole may have a lot of sway, but Hercules figures he can make him change his mind. Most people have a breaking point if you push hard enough, he’s found. However, Angelica shakes her head, seizing the computer from Charlies with a single, pointed glare that sends him scampering, and selecting several documents to print.

Hercules frowns.

“Madison?”

James has always been a reasonable man, far more so than any of the other neurosurgeons he’s encountered. He’d go so far as to consider him a friend. But she shakes her head again, grabbing the printed notes from the bedside, swinging off the chair and stalking over to Peggy’s side.

Peggy holds out a hand before Angelica has said a word, her eyes transfixed on Adrianne’s chest. Angelica, surprisingly enough, pauses. Waits.

After a few more moments, Peggy looks down at her watch quickly, scribbles a note next to the words ‘respiratory rate’ in her chart, and then finally turns to glance up at Angelica’s face.

She sees her tired eyes, the slight furrow of her brow, the determined line of her lips, and Peggy smiles. It’s a small and tired. It’s understanding and apparently, it’s enough.

“I’ll watch him. It’s okay. Go.”

Angelica nods, pats Peggy on the shoulder awkwardly once, then turns on her heel back to Hercules.

“Come with me,” she says.

He, of course, obeys. Peggy moves her chair in view of both Lafayette’s as they leave, squeezing Hercules arm as he passes. He and Angelica walk all the way down the length of the ICU, out into the hallway and past the operating theatres. That can’t be good.

“Where are we going?” He finally asks.

They come to the back set of elevators and step inside, pushing the button for the sixth floor. Angelica catches his gaze in the reflection of the metal doors as they slide closed. They both look tired, so tired, but that’s nothing new.

“There’s an issue with beds and staffing,” she enunciates clearly over the whirring sound of the elevator speeding up to the top floors, “And even if Jefferson has chosen to be delightful un-dickish tonight, it’s been suggested that even with approval from both our departments, we still can’t run the operation.”

Hercules can _feel_ his heart catch and relocates itself somewhere in the depths of his stomach. Even if that doesn’t make any logical sense, that’s what he feels. They need to operate, and as promptly as possible. He opens his mouth to speak, but can’t find the words.

“So, naturally,” Angelica continues, dark eyes fixed on his across their mirrored likeness’, “I’ve organised a meeting with Washington.”

“He’s still in?” Hercules has a half a million questions in mind, but it’s the only one he can manage to voice.

He’s only met Washington twice in all the years he’s worked here. But Angelica shakes her head again, with a mischievous grin that seems completely out of place, given everything the night has brought so far. And yet, it fills him with a new hope that he didn’t think was feasible, and there’s a glimmer of satisfaction in Angelica’s voice as they step out of the elevator into the polished hallways of the executive administration’s offices-

“I called him in. He wants to talk.”

They come to a halt outside a large set of mahogany doors. There’s a gold-plated sign which reads “Professor George Washington, Chief Executive.” A quick check confirms that Angelica is ready. Her shoulders are squared, her jaw is set and she is ready to fight. And so is he.

Hercules takes a deep breath, silently asks Lafayette to stay stable for just a little while longer, and pushes the door open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GWash up next! Thanks for reading :D xx


	14. and places to take a stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are short of beds, short of staff! We gotta make an all out stand.

When he'd announced to his wife one late summer evening that he was thinking of applying role of executive, George Washington had been rather surprised and a little wounded, though he's never show it, when she'd laughed in his face.

"What, you don't think I'll get the position?" He'd asked, perplexed. He was more than qualified for ten job, and had excellent references to boost his application.

"Oh no, you'll definitely get the job," She'd managed to explain between chuckles, "More than that, you'd be fantastic at it, anyone with eyes and half a brain would know that."

"Then what?" He'd asked again.

But she's smiled and shaken her head and never replied. To this day he wondered what she'd found to funny about his comment.

He had, as it so happened, been successful in his application, and several more afterwards, which is how he's found himself in his office at an absurd hour of the night, as Executive Director of Forge Valley Hospital, facing one of his most brilliant doctors, one of his most extensively published surgeons, an ICU nurse who looked almost as confused as he did, and the nursing coordinator of Forge Valley.

Who also happened to be his wife.

"Martha," he takes his seat, nodding to her.

"George," she replies, with similar apathy.

 Jefferson snorts, and George turns to the surgeon, who raises his eyebrows and hands ever so slightly in defense. He and Martha have a very strict, professional relationship within the walls of the hospital. There's no way they could be seen to be effective and unbiased otherwise; people talk. They always do.

But he's known Jefferson for years now, they started at Forge Valley in the same year. Even if he wouldn't say they were friends, they've spent many long nights together, from emergency cases to Christmas dinners, not to have something between them. Respect, at the very least.

"Thomas," he nods his head in the direction of the surgeon, before turning slightly to face the unimpressed looking woman beside him, the catalyst of this whole affair. Not for the first time this evening, he notices that there's a niggling ache at the back of his mouth on the right side, there has been for some hours now. He clenches his jaw and smiles.

"Angelica, thank you for organising this all so efficiently." This, at least, seems to warrant a flicker of a smile from his doctor, which he returns, and faces the final face at this impromptu panel. "And, I'm afraid we haven't met before?"

"Hercules Mulligan, ICU nurse," Angelica answers the question before the man himself has a chance to, but he seems more amused than irritated by this, and frankly rather unsurprised. Angelica presses on.

"Sir, you know why we're meeting here tonight. I have a patient who needs surgery and yet, despite this being a centre for excellent and leading health provider, we are unable to provide the required treatment." Angelica is fierce. She throws the hospital slogans in his face without humour, without malice. He likes that. They need more people who are willing to fight, willing to speak up to their superiors. He’s always admired Angelica. She leans forward to press her point.

"He needs the surgery. We have a surgeon. How can there be any argument as to how we proceed?"

Before he has a chance to answer, Martha shakes her head and speaks up. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid." She catches George's gaze and continues.

"With Franklin stuck in theatre doing the spinal reconstruction, and taking half the on-call staff with him, Ross has two emergency C-Sections which we barely have the resources for-"

"I was under the impression that we had three overnight theatre lists," Angelica interjects.

Martha moves forward to meet her gaze, looking around Jefferson, much to his displeasure.

"As was I, Angelica, but plans change and Benjamin asks for extra staff for a dual approach procedure and now, we find ourselves short handed. And, what's more, recovery isn't staffed to deal with him either."

George frowns at this.

"But this patient will be coming directly from ICU, doesn't that then put us under capacity?"

She shakes her head, again. "The truth is we're already over, with nurses on double shifts and doctors called in- it's a state wide emergency situation and we just have to be patient and ride it out."

"Patience be damned! If there's any chance of avoiding more extensive brain damage, we need to do the operation tonight," Jefferson slaps his hand onto the table, "The sooner the better. We've already wasted too many precious minutes with this chatter, let's just start the procedure and worry about the beds later."

"Thomas," Martha starts. George has never envied this part of her job – she is essential the deliverer for bad news on all fronts. But, Thomas is already talking over her.

"I'll do the entire operation on my own if I have to, God knows I have the skills-"

"Oh, right, so is this just about you being so wonderful or are we actually trying to help, I don't know, save Lafayette’s life-"

Angelica comes in over Thomas and the pain in the back of George's mouth is getting to the point where he's considering reaching for the pack of ibuprofen he has in his desk drawer, given its unlikely he's going to be resting anytime soon.

"Okay, hold up." George has always been able to quiet a room without raising his voice, a skill he has found more and more useful of late. All eyes turn to him, and he holds out both hands, hoping to placate the tempestuous room for the moment. "I can see that you're all very keen to get this sorted, and quickly. But first, let's get some of the facts straight. Who is this Lafayette? What's his story?"

For the first time, Mulligan speaks up.

"Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette. He's a twenty five year old male, who was brought in after a pedestrian versus car- he was crossing the road with his wife in the city, they've both just arrived from France." Mulligan speaks slowly and clearly, doesn't waste his words or their time. "Multi trauma with orthopaedic input on pelvic and lower limb fractures, TBI with possible DAI, previously stable but increasing ICP and EVD drainage, cumulating in tonic-clinic seizure activity witnessed earlier this evening."

He pauses, wetting his lips slowly as George watches him carefully. They are all watching him, actually. For all his courtesy, far greater than any that the other inhabitants of the room have granted him, Mulligan waits with the coiled energy of someone who has more to say. He takes his leave at the incline of Georges head and continues.

"If nursing hands are needed in theatre, then I'm happy to offer my services. I've trained as a scrub nurse and even if it's been a few years since I've done any procedures of this level of complexity, I've scrubbed a few times in the last two years, enough that I'll know my way around, with Mr. Jefferson's assistance."

He pauses again, allowing Jefferson to consider the proposal.

"If you feel adequately trained for the task, I'm more than up for it." Jefferson replies, a moment later. "I'd only ask that, if Franklin isn't free, you'd allow Madison to scrub with me. I trust him far more than any of the locums, and this is going to be messy enough as is."

He directs the second comment to George, who mulls over the plan. Jefferson is certainly competent, as is Madison. He may not technically meet the qualifications to act as assistant, but he's less than a year off sitting the graduate exams and he'll be working with the best this nation’s got. On top of that, Angelica seems to trust this Hercules Mulligan, and her words is more than enough for him to act on.

He nods.

"Jefferson, you and Madison will be permitted to perform the procedure, under my direct supervision." This comment provokes a confused look from Jefferson. "If I am to act in an unorthodox fashion, I may as well commit to it and be there to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible," George explains. He’d been planning on booking a dentist’s appointment tomorrow. That will have to wait.

"Angelica, I trust ICU will be happy to take over care once the procedure has been completed?"

She nods, smiling finally. Martha, however, does not grin.

"And in recovery?" She asks. "Who will watch him there? Like I said, we don't have the staff-"

"I will." Hercules Mulligan offers himself a second time, and this time Angelica is lacking the smug certainty, and Martha is looking genuinely concerned.

"Mulligan, I know you've cared for him for a few days now, but-"

"Is that all that stands in the way?" He cuts across her, uncharacteristically so, if Angelica's perturbed pout os anything to go by.

"A pair of hands in theatre, a set of eyes in recovery. I'm fresh, I only started a few hours ago. Let me do this."

His voice is steady as ever, but George doesn't miss the way his hand trembles slightly, the way he swallows a little too hard as his gaze flickers from Angelica, over to Jefferson, before finally landing on George and staying there. He seems determined, yet reasoned. Calm. George can't find a flaw in his proposal, not one that's any more significant than the other gaping holes in this plan. But that's critical care- patching up holes and taking risks because your patients are at a point where, given time, they will only get worse. He can understand the desperation, strung in strong swathes across the inhabitants of the room.

George Washington smiles.

"Sounds like we have a plan," he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the beginning of night shifts has come a rise in my insanity and a drop in my free time- updates are going to be a little inconsistent, I apologise in advance! Shall do my best to stay on top of it, but sleep comes first! Also food. And coffee. Stay safe, lovely reader, and I hope you enjoyed GWash xx


	15. up in it, loving it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Usually, Hercules would be the last person to pick a fight.

It's been a long while since Hercules served his time as a scrub nurse.

It was his first job, back before ED. And he definitely misses some parts- the extraordinary procedures he could assist with, the technical skills, the (relatively) cooperative teamwork of the OR. But he doesn't miss the sterility, the inhumanity. The lack of windows, of any sense of the world outside.

He runs into Yun in the change rooms as he is reaching for the medium sized surgical scrubs. The man is at least two heads shorter than him and nips in under his arm to pick out a pair of smaller scrubs.

"Mulligan! It's been too long, man. How's ICU treating you?" Yun slaps his shoulder, chuckling amicably. "You're, like, three times bigger than I remember. What happened, did you finally commit and enlist like you always said you would?"

Ha. He'd forgotten about that. Yun has started out around the same time as he finished. And, true enough, Hercules had still been a gangly thing then, all height and no breadth, not yet grown. He's been so young.

"Nah, this is all, um, good genetics?" He switches direction, reaching for the larger scrubs as Yun laughs.

"Of course. It's good to see you again, you should come down more often!"

Yun heads towards Betsy's theater to help out with the caesarean cases, while Hercules peels off to wash up in the main sinks. He'd never have picked Yun to end up in midwifery, but then again, he knows so little about so many of the people he works with. Right on cue, James Madison pulls up into the sink beside him, pumps several times at the hand wash and starts the warm water flowing with a tap of his foot.

"Mulligan," he says, in a simple greeting.

"Madison," Hercules returns, scrubbing beneath his nails which were most probably fairly clean already.

James huffs a smile as he spreads the lathered soap up his arms.

"Glad to be working with you again too, though I would prefer it to be under less strenuous circumstances.

Hercules shrugs.

"It's good to know that Lafayette will be under at least one pair of hands I trust."

"Ha." Madison shakes his head. "I know he's got his problems, trust me. But whatever his shortcomings, Jefferson is a fantastic surgeon. That's what Lafayette needs right now."

Lafayette is, of course, in the pre-theater bay with the anesthetists as they speak. He's already sedated and ventilated, but there's still adjustments to be made, analgesia to attend to, surgeons and their particular positioning preferences to deal with.

"I don't understand how you're so happy work with him."

Madison frowns, "Who, Thomas?"

Hercules shrugs. He's not after an argument, but Jefferson's ridiculously high expectations of registrars, the long hours he expects them to stay, the tough grilling he subjects them to each ward round, are a thing of legend across Valley Forge.

"He's skilled, sure, but you could easily have dual supervision, for sanity's sake."

Hercules rinses the soap of his hands before reapplying a new layer. Scrubbing up is a lengthy process, but there's something almost meditative about the continuous, circling motion. The soap forms white suds against his skin, foaming from his fingertips right down to the junction of his elbow.

"I'm just saying, Jefferson can't be easy to work under, day in and day out."

Madison doesn't reply for a moment. The pair stand in silence with only the distant chatter of the theater tech staff setting up, muffled by the closed doors, to fill the air. When he does speak, Madison sounds careful and considered.

"He's a better man that you give him credit for. Than most give him credit for. He doesn't just work hard for glory and bragging rights- he cares about his patients, just as much as anyone else, often more, I'd wager. He just shows it in a different way."

Madison turns off the water, his hands dripping, his eyes fixed firmly forwards. Hercules is somewhat taken aback- that may be the most impassioned phrase he's ever heard from the surgical trainee.

"Hey, I didn't mean any offense." He turns off his own tap, shaking his hands. "I'm sorry, it's your career, your choices, man."

With a long, slow exhale, Madison turns to face him. He seems calm, considered. He's always been exceptionally good at moderating his behaviour. Well, had been- his previous outburst was certainly a first, as far as Hercules was concerned.

"It's okay. None taken. It's a long night ahead for us both, let's just stay focused."

Hercules can't argue with that.

As they walk towards the theater door, he remembers to ask-

"How's Dolly doing?"

Madison turns to press the door open with his back, hands outstretched to remain sterile as he moves, a tired, stretched smile leaving Hercules feeling rather cold as he replies-

"Fine. She's been promoted to head of vascular, as I'm sure you heard." Hercules had. "And, well, we're getting divorced."

And with that flippantly dramatic phrase, he heads over to the laid out gloves and towels to begin drying up, leaving Hercules standing slightly surprised, just inside the doorway, hands dripping cold water onto the floor.

Tonight was full of surprises.

He follows Madison over, picking up one of the blue towels. They dry their hands side by side, and Hercules would almost be too afraid to bring up the matter again, were it not for the years between them and the fact that, in his experience, it was always better to give people going through a hard time a chance to talk up, rather than assume that they'd rather not share.

"That's gotta be hard, working in the same hospital and all." Hercules offers as a starter.

Madison, however, shakes his head. His voice is low as he replies, and with good reason- theater staff here are always on the lookout for fresh gossip.

"It's not that exciting, really. We grew up, we grew apart. We'd just graduated when we got married and, even if we are still great friends, it's just not what we thought it was gonna be. It doesn't work with who we are now."

That seems a fair enough reply, and he does appear genuinely nonplussed as he explains it. Maybe it's what's best for the man, but it still must be a stressful time. Hercules is about to reply, when the theater doors swing open, bringing forth Jefferson, complete with magenta scrub cap improbably poised over his forehead, just covering the ends of his unruly curls; gown, mask and gloves in place, ready to begin.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he proclaims, to everyone and no one in particular, all at once, "Let's get this man's skull opened up!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have hit 1000 hits! How exciting! Thank you to everyone who is following along this madness :D Also Madison is the sweetest and he needs some love, but more from him soon (?) xx


	16. well, we'll see how it goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Madison has been working with Thomas Jefferson for a long time. He knows just how good he is. 
> 
> ***this chapter contains description of surgical procedures**  
> not particularly gory, but fair warning if that's not your thing!

“The important thing to remember,” Thomas explains, as he carefully angles the teeth of the electronic saw against the newly exposed skull, lit bright white under the bulbs overhead, “Is to angle the edges right here, yeah like that - hold that section a little more laterally Mulligan – angle it so that it’s gonna make a bevelled edge.”

James watches as Thomas makes the slightest of adjustments to the way he is holding his implement. Clad in their gowns, gloved hands carefully laid within the sterile field, the three men are circled around Lafayette’s exposed head, Mulligan and James either side of Thomas.

Watching carefully, trying to memorise the approach Thomas is using, James is irritated to feel a small patch of sweat forming at the back of his neck. There’s something about wearing gloves and a mask that sets him on edge. He probably should have worked that out before he started out his studies as a surgeon.

“Lateral, Mulligan, I said lateral. If I wanted you to pull it down south, I woulda asked Betsy to pop in here instead. At least she seems to have some sense of direction.”

Mulligan doesn’t apologise, but alters his hand and the direction of it’s traction. He's a smart man, and a good nurse. James hadn't intended to shock him, with the news about Dolly and all. He's just accepted that that part of his life is over. Maybe because it has been over for so long now, no matter how they'd both tried to ignore it. Maybe because Dolly seems happier than he's seen her in years. 

Anyway, Jefferson appears satisfied with the adjustment, as he doesn’t deign to insult the nurse any further, instead addressing James with his next phrase.

“And why are the bevelled edges so important?”

It’s not ego that leads James to assume that the question is obviously directed at him. During an emergency out of hours operation, Thomas is just as likely as anyone else to defer the need for teaching to a more appropriate moment. Which means he is selective with his questioning. Which means he only has ears for his most direct inferior. Which would be James.

“It’s the primary factor in avoiding sunken skull flap syndrome on cranioplasty,” He smoothly replies, thankful that he’d been studying this section of complications not two weeks ago and the memory of his carefully printed notecards was still fresh. Thomas nods, eyes still trained on the skull, planning his next few moves, but he doesn’t say anything, so James continues. “Along with ongoing smoking, sunken skull is the leading cause for neurological deterioration following craniectomy.”

“Good.”

James lets his lips snap shut, trying not to feel too pleased with the positive appraisal of his response. He’s done his best to estimate how much information Thomas is asking for when he quizzes him in the middle of theatre, and he seems to be getting better at satisfying the surgeon’s expectations of him.

He shouldn’t let that affect him. Not in the way that it does.

Thomas’ arm slides against his own, warm through the layers between them. He can feel as much as he can see every action that the man makes. They are pressed from shoulder to hip, making do with the little space they are provided. After so many operations carried out in this precise fashion, he’d have hoped that he’d have stoped noticing the little things about Thomas, the things he only seems to notice when their faces are only inches apart, and the strong lights in combination with his stronger glasses, set aside for close examination, make Thomas truly a sight for sore eyes. And James catches himself noticing the little things about him.

The way his beard is always perfectly maintained, the dark hairs scattered up along his cheek, down across his neck, somehow tapering in length as they fan out from his thick lips. The way his rounded nose is always slightly pink in the moderated heat of theatre – it’s nice for James to see that he’s not the only one affected by the temperature, the lights, the layers of protection. The way that Thomas’ lips fall slightly apart when he’s focused and about to act.

The circular blade of the saw whirrs into action and bites delicately into the bone beneath it. James steels himself, hauls his brain out of whatever spiral of adulation it was working itself into. Now is not the time.

To his credit, as far as James has witnessed, Thomas has not once yet failed to live up to his reputation, every single time he gets his hands on a brain. Which, to be fair to Thomas’ qualifications, is more impressive once you consider the length of his daily lists. And that isn’t taking into consideration emergency cases.

As his hands guide the spinning metal along the curve of the temporal section, he cuts with careful precision, but wastes no time. He is the master and the bone beneath his hands, the hands holding it all together around him, they are all ancillary to his command.

But when they lift away the section of skull, Lafayette’s brain slowly but steadily blossoms outwards before their eyes.

All that James can think of, in that moment, is how strongly the shape resembles a mushroom. It’s hardly the most sophisticated appraisal of the situation but, well, it’s true. The bloodied tissue swells forward with unexpected fervour, swiftly filling the space they had cleared and extending beyond the bony border. The imaging had indicated extreme enough pressures to warrant the procedure, but to witness the expanding flesh before his own eyes is something else. He’s seen intracranial hypertension before, but this is something else.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” So he’s not the only one who’s surprised. Thomas’ response, cutting across the sudden silence in the sterile operating room, hardly encapsulates the bizarre spectacle they are witnessing.

“Shit,” Is the next phrase to fill the silence. It comes from Mulligan, and seems to James a fare more apt assessment.

“Yeah,” Thomas echoes, “Okay, that’s not going back on anytime tonight. I’m gonna need some sterile wrap, dressings and-“

The room buzzes into action around his directions. This is what they’ve trained for, this is why they stay awake long shifts, studying late into the night and working over the holidays.

It’s dangerous, but it’s exciting. They function as a team, packaging up the bone for later re-insertion, protecting and padding around the newly exposed brain. It’s not ideal, sending a patient out of theatre with bone missing, but in situations like this, there’s no other option. It would be madness to attempt to press the brain back in, to try and force the skull section back on.

Thomas holds out a scalpel to James, who takes it with a curiously cocked eyebrow.

“That dura isn’t going to slice itself, darling.” Thomas drawls.

With a nod, and what he hopes can be translated into a professional but grateful smile, James turns to the brain tissue, poising the tip of the blade over the thin layer of protective tissue. He remembers what he’d read about Lafayette, about his wife, about the unfortunate situation. He remembers the research paper Thomas had referred him to, about the benefits and complications of releasing the dura during a decompressive craniectomy. He has to agree with him that, in this situation, providing less points of pressure and more chance for the brain to expand unabated, the better.

He takes in a slow, steady breath, licks his lips, and presses the scalpel down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surgery, surgeryyyyy - but yeah, that's not good.  
> Oh boy, they are gay, so very gay, but I have a feeling no one is gonna be mad bout that? Blame the night shifts, they make me crave some unrequited southern motherfuckers - also the new clipping album. Blame that. Dammit Daveed.  
> Anyway, I'm rambling. Enjoy! And all the love to all of y'all leaving me comments, keeps me trying to keep my updates daily! xx
> 
> Today's learning points: http://medind.nic.in/icf/t11/i2/icft11i2p105.pdf


	17. be no here when you wake up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> deep breath and leave it behind you ready to jump  
> be right here when you wake up  
> there'll be no here when you wake up

As he peels the latex gloves off his hands, Hercules relishes the sensation of cool air against his skin, a kind reprise after the hours under the hot lights. Jefferson and Madison have long disappeared, scuttling away to their surgical respite of operation reports and reimaging, while he is left with the tech staff and the anaesthetics nurse to safely transfer Lafayette back to a bed and bring him through to recovery.

There’s a thick white bandage laid out over the left half of his head, with the carefully printed words in black pen making clear to anyone who might not know the situation that there is ‘NO BONE’ beneath the fabric. It seems crude, it _is_ crude, but it’s also the only way they know how to release the pressure and give Lafayette’s brain a chance to heal, so it will have to do.

Madison, at least, had tried to explain the process to him, before Jefferson had hauled him away.

Time. It’s a generosity not usually afforded nursing staff. Time; that is, time spent by others to consider that they can’t possibly know every procedure, every condition, no matter how well trained and experienced they are. A well placed word of advice can be critical to care, particularly coming from the mouth of whoever is to blame, can mean a world of difference.

That is assuming that people are ready to listen.

But Hercules is, he always is. Nothing is ever made more difficult through more knowledge. Whoever said ignorance is bliss never had to try configure the coronary pressures of a post-heart transplant patient whose surgeon didn’t bother to leave any details about precisely where she’d placed the pacing wires.

That had not been a fun night. Though, to be fair, difficult experiences can make for some steadfast friends. 

He pulls on a fresh pair of blue gloves, following the anaesthetists directions as they direct Lafayette’s body carefully onto the wheeled bed. As his nurse, Hercules takes charge of the portable ventilator and the drugs pole. However, he is hardly short of helping hands to direct the bed into the recovery bay.

Rami, another familiar face from years ago, pushes the locks down on the brakes with the heel of her hand, as they slot into the designated cubicle.

“Need anything?” She asks, rubbing wearily beneath her eyes. Her nails are still chewed right down to the stub. Some things never change.

“I should be fine,” Hercules replies. With a curt nod, she disappears back behind the desk, pressing a button to lower the lights in the bay, in case the heavy doses of sedation aren’t enough alone to help the patients who aren’t comatose catch a few hours of restorative sleep before morning, and he is left alone.

Well, not alone. He has Lafayette.

Now that the operation is over, some semblance of normalcy has been restored to the young man’s presentation. He’s back in the hospital gown, the only form of fashion Hercules has ever seen him in, his arms and legs tucked neatly into the pre-warmed blankets to help maintain a steady temperature. Brain surgery can do the strangest things to a body.

It’s probably appropriate for him to do a set of observations, just as a benchmark to start the recovery process. He may be exhausted beyond appropriate for the hours passes since he set foot inside the hospital this evening, but he still has a job to do.

“Work with me, Laf,” He murmurs as he approaches with a pen torch, “There’s no way this is any fun for you, but we all gotta do our part.”

Hercules pauses by the man’s face. Lafayette's eyes are still closed, long lashes neatly tucked together, a little of the yjoclmoisturising gel used to maintain the corneal surface leaking from the corners, almost like gelatinous tears, caught mid-fall. He wants to wipe them away, even thought he knows they are there to help, that they will keep Lafayette’s eyes protected while his own ducts can’t do the job- even though he knows that they are not actually tears.

Old habits are hard to shake. He clears his throat.

“All right, you know the drill. Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, open up your eyes for me.”

Nothing.

“If you can hear me, Lafayette, open your eyes. Open them up.”

He dutifully reaches down to pull away the sheets, taking both of Lafayette hands in his.

“Squeeze my hands, Lafayette. Squeeze my hands.”

Hercules knows that, even without the brain injury, there’s too much medication on board for a response to be reasonable. But he’s not about to slack off on assumption, or just because change is still unlikely.

“Sorry bout the light,” He warns, before pulling up Lafayette’s eyelids and flickering the pen torch back and forth, watching carefully for the ever so slight contraction and dilation of his pupils. Given since their fixed response, what must have been only hours ago, but feels like eons in the past, the millimeters that they shift are more reassuring than anything else he’s seen so far this evening.

“Good job, that’s the way.” He smiles down at Lafayette, quickly having a listen to his chest and abdomen through the thin gown before tucking his arms back in.

He takes a familiar seat by Lafayette’s side and slowly begins to fill in his observations report. His numbers are good, his ICP is stable.

It’s all just like it was before, except for one significant change. The white bandages may be superficially protecting his brain for now, but they herald a higher level of damage to deal with. Hercules saw the way Lafayette's brain looked, and he doesn’t have to be a neurosurgeon to know it didn’t look good.

But that’s why they were doing the operation, that’s what they were aiming to treat. So, Lafayette’s in the right place, he’s receiving the right treatment, he’s under the best care. If that’s the case, then why is Hercules still so worried?

Logically, he knows its because his patient is still sick, still very sick. Even with the right treatment, this is the kind of thing that can lead to patients crashing, hard. He knows it’s also partly because he knows Lafayette’s story, he’s seen his wife almost as much as he’s seen the man in question. He knows there’s no way this story has a perfectly happy ending.

And yet, for some strange reason, he wishes he could give them just that. That's not to say he’d never wish ill on any of his patients, he always hopes that they will recover, and fully. But the injustice of the Lafayette’s story is hitting him harder than he’d expected.

Maybe that’s why he’d so readily agreed to come back down to theatre, despite what he’d promised himself six months ago.

Maybe that’s why he’s sitting here now, jaw set and arms crossed over his chest in determined stubbornness, as the hours tick onwards into the realm of time he’d usually set aside for heavy sleeping.  

“Who knows,” He tells Lafayette, “But either way, all we can do now is wait.”

And so, side by side, they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting a little caught up there, ey Hercules?   
> I'm still slightly nocturnal and insane. But! Updates are happening!   
> I should point out that this story is very much happening as I go (literally parts are written into the side of my handover sheets on break like the terrible time poor person that I am) so if you have any requests for characters/plots/writing styles or anything, I'd be happy to see if I can incorporate it in! I have already had one exciting suggestion which has lead to a whole new arm to the story, though still a while away :D   
> Stay awesome, my lovely readers, and see you soon! xx


	18. no matter what they tell you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yet her situation is such as only to authorise a glimmering of hope.” (A.H. 1801)

When Peggy checks the clock, she’s frankly quite disappointed to see that it’s only been seventeen minutes since she had last looked. The dramatic start to the evening meant that the first half of her shift had flown by, even when she’d been in the dark, there was no doubt from the way Lafayette had flown back from CT that he’d been in dire straights, that and the high doses of midazolam Hercules had left in his chart.

True to her words, she had watched him carefully, as carefully as she had been attending to his wife for the past three days. Patience was one virtue she had found the time to master, though constant meticulous monitoring could do wonders to speed things along when you had double the workload to attend to.

By by comparison, once Lafayette had been whisked away and she’d been left with Adrianne, an empty cubicle and a million questions to attend to, the minutes dragged by. Even for her.  

It’s always strange when she’s working without Hercules beside her.

The one good thing about young babies – and there is a long list of wonderful things about babies that she’d be happy to cite right in Angelica’s face every time she makes a snide comment about ‘family values’ – but the good thing about babies which still applies when you are ten miles away from them, is that they can be relied on to not keep regular hours, just like her. Four in the morning has just come and passed when Essie sends her a picture of her gorgeous little girl, tucked into her cot, eyes wide and smile wider, oblivious to anything other than whatever is causing her, in that moment, such innocent adulation. Before Peggy can afford to get misty eyed over her adorable tiny lips and chubby cheeks, a message pops up on the screen beneath the photo.

_4:12 For someone who’s mama has such terrible taste in music, Stephanie sure does love Nicki Minaj! >:D _

Peggy covers her giggle with her hand, shaking her head and quickly typing out a reply.

_4:12 dont u dare ruin her ears wit ur trash_

4:13 _she not sleeping well?_

_4:13 sometimes it helps to move her into the kitchen, i think she likes the sound of the branches against the window idk it dosnt always work_

_4:13 or like idk_

_4:13 not ruin her ears with ur trash_

Grinning, a little madly but honestly there’s nothing new about that, she stashes her phone back into the top drawer beneath the computer. No one would really mind that she’s using it on shift, but she doesn’t want to think too much about what she’s missing at home.

Not that she regrets going back to work. She’s missed this – the long hours, the difficult cases, the friends. It’s been so long since she’s had to think, and think hard, and even if her patient is desperately unresponsive and she’s only been back for three days, she’s glad that she is in a position where she can come back and work. She’s doing it for more than the pay check. Now all she has to do is tell herself that a few more times, and she might actually believe it.

With a quick check of Adrianne’s vitals, Peggy pulls her phone out again, scrolling back up to the picture of her baby girl. It’s been impossibly hard leaving her each morning, even if she trusts Essie more than most. She’s not worried about a disaster, she’s worried about all the pristine little moments of Stephanie that she’s missing. Every single one.

And she is _so_ beautiful. It’s hard to understand how she could have made something so tiny and precious, something entirely hers. It seems improbable, but there she is, day in and day out, proving to Peggy more than anything else ever has, that she is worth something. Something that no one else can take away from her.

As she watches, two more messages come through from Essie.

_4:19 Chill out Peg, we’re having a fun early morning feed, then back to cuddles and naps._

_4:19 Hope work is going okay xx_

Trust Essie to read her that well. Peggy stows away the phone again, but this time with a hearty sigh.

Ever since Steph got sick when she was only a few weeks old, it’s been hard not to worry about what might happen, what could change in the hours that she’s away. Essie is studying medicine part-time, which was honestly a major factor in her selection as an ideal babysitter. She is also doing her pre-clinical work online via correspondence, and is a reverent night-studier to boot, making Peggy’s request for someone to stay overnight and watch her baby for a reasonable fee rather ideal, as opposed to cause for a pay rise.

Though, now that she thinks about, Peggy really ought to give Essie a raise. She’ll have to remember to consider that when she’s setting out her next budget. She'll try to make it work.

Meanwhile, she has her own issues to contend with. Sometime in the next few days, they’ll start weaning Adrianne’s sedation. She’s already pulled up the radiology orders screen and Angelica has the repeat CT brain scheduled for in two days time. Until then, there’s nothing to do but wait and hope that her current expectations, based the pages of consideration and conclusions sitting beside her on the nursing desk, are entirely wrong.

“I imagine he’s out of theater by now,” She lets Adrianne know, once it’s hit five, “And, now don’t tell anyone else I told you this, but Jefferson has a soft spot for Angelica. So he isn’t gonna fuck up one of hers.”  

She comes around to the head of Adrianne’s pillow, tucking her hair neatly under her head, grabbing some gauze to swipe away a little of the saliva accumulating and leaking from the corner of her lips, stretched open around the tube channeling air into her lungs.

“How do I know this, you ask?” She smiles, throwing the gauze into her bin bag and pumping some hand sanitiser onto her skin. “You gotta watch everyone carefully in here, Adrianne, they all think they’re so smart, but they’re still just people. And people are hilarious.”

Propping herself back up onto her chair, which is anchored high enough that her feet don’t have to touch the ground, she settles herself back into a comfortable position to spend a careful few hours watching, and waiting. At this point, there’s only so much she can hope for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... Peggy!   
> Who seems like the kind of person who would trash text, yeah?


	19. stay here by your side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more than one part to the narrative.

As the morning operating lists begin, the recovery bay truly comes to life. Patients are rolled in and out of the bays around them. Some, like Lafayette, are deeply sedated, dosing and oblivious to the world. Others stare at the white walls around them, conversing in the small words and simple phrases of the drug-addled minds. Nurses bustle between the beds, attending to wound dressings and carefully monitoring the waking patients. Anaesthetists visit in between cases to dismiss the well and successfully recovering back to the wards they came from.

In their corner, Hercules and Lafayette sit in silence. It’s been almost eight hours since the operation, and Lafayette’s intracranial pressures have remained steady. He’s had three units of blood and a fresh bag of antibiotics has just been hung up.

And Hercules is getting _tired_.

It’s far noisier now that the operating theatre are working at full pace. That’s another thing he likes about his regular shifts – even when things are heading downhill, it’s generally quiet. Conversations are held at calm, reasonable pitches and there’s very little movement around the ward. Even at its busiest, the trauma ward is a quiet place to be.

The recovery bay is noisy. Wheels squeak as they swivel around polished floors, regular readings on the illuminated screens situated behind every pillow ring out in peals of increasing anxiety as pulses race and pressure drop. Shoes clatter past and the clustered conversations combine in a cacophony of clamour which seems to accumulate into an indistinguishable din.

Hercules isn’t sure which sound is the most annoying at this point, but he has a headache and it isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. He closes his eyes, rubbing at his brow with a weary sigh. Over the commotion, he doesn’t hear the sound of one particular pair of black patent leather lace-ups, stalking from the side entrance of the recovery bay, directly over to the corner where Lafayette is lying.

“Hey.”

At the all too familiar sound of Peggy’s voice, Hercules looks up. It’s funny, she spends so much of her time entertaining those around her with her dry humour and quick wit, it’s easy for him to forget what a beautiful voice she has. It’s been years since he’s heard her sing.

“Hey yourself.”

His own voice comes out in a deep rumble, a little hoarser than usual, now that he’s listening for it. Peggy raises a pointed eyebrow at the sound of it, which he ignores. He coughs, attempting to clear his throat, patting at the front of his chest with an open palm.

“How’s Steph?”

“She’s fine.”

Hercules really doesn’t like the way she’s narrowing her eyes at him. He tries for a different angle.

“How’s Adrianne?”

Peggy turns, feeling around the blankets of the bed and carefully sitting down to the side of Lafayette’s leg. She turns to his sleeping face, patting around the area where his hand would be sitting beneath the sheets.

“If you don’t mind, I’m just gonna pop here for a second, until Mulligan gives me his seat and heads right on home.” Hercules holds up a hand, but she slaps it away. They both look a little confused at the sound her hand makes against his, delirious with exhaustion, but she recovers first.

“Your wife is doing well, but she’s spiked a small fever again. I think she misses you. Not that I’m blaming you, or something, it’s not your fault brain is deciding to fiesta, but I’m just saying!” She flicks her hair out of her face, smirking at Lafayette. “It’s better for you both when you’re together.”

Now, she turns back to her friend, crossing her arms defiantly across her chest, anticipating his resistance.

“Peg. There’s no way you got Essie to stay overtime for this long.”

“Ha! Of course not, but you don’t think I have back-up options?”

She leans over, placing a hand on Hercules’ shoulder, her gaze steady and her resolve firm.

“You need to go home.”

He shakes his head.

“Lafayette needs me here. I said I would watch him post-op, this is my responsibility.”

Peggy snorts, but her hand doesn’t break contact, instead tracing small, reassuring circles into his muscle. It’s an unexpected action, but it’s nicer than he would admit. It’s been a long night.

“Mulligan, he’s all our responsibility. And you can’t do anything for him sleep deprived and making mistakes.”

He knows she’s right on that point, and so does she. But there’s a stubborn streak in Hercules that has never quite known when to quit. And there’s something in the way that Lafayette is static amongst the swirling activity of the room that sets his sensibilities off kilter.

“There’s no way you’ve had enough sleep, either. What’s the point in coming in here, just to tell me off, when you have a child to look after-“

“-Hey! Hey.” Now she actually looks pissed off. “Don’t bring Steph into this.”

That was a mistake.

With the strength of someone double her size, Peggy slides off the bed and hauls him to his feet.

“I caught six hours sleep in the on call rooms, now you’re gonna get your ass out of this ward and go do the same. Then once you’re back, if Lafayette is still here and not back where he belongs in ICU, we can talk about what to do next.”

Slipping past him, Peggy plonks herself down onto the seat and swings her legs up onto the edge of the bed, to the instant disdain of the nurse in the next cubicle. Peggy winks at her, pops a stick of gum between her teeth and flaps her hands at Hercules, shooing him away.

“I’m serious. I don’t want to see you back here for another seven hours, god knows when you last ate.”

At this point, Hercules isn’t sure if she’d prefer for him to lean down and give her a hug or flip her off. He opts to tap her on the end of her nose, to which she only looks only more irritated, until he sighs, picks up his jacket and nods at her.

“Okay. You win.”

She beams up at him.

“That’s my boy. Sweet dreams, sweetie. I’ll look after Laf for you, so rest easy.”  

 He nods again. And he can smile back at her with genuine gratitude before he turns to leave.

“I know you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is delayed, work has been slightly insane between some really really sick people and my upcoming presentation.. I promise I'll make up for it come Friday and beyond! 
> 
> Also, for anyone who is also reading 'Tell My Story' that chapter won't be up till the weekend! But it's a good one :D


	20. how lucky we are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who keeps your flame, who tells your story?

As always, Alexander Hamilton is there when she arrives.

“Good evening, Eliza!” He says, greeting her with tired eyes over the top edge of his laptop, fingers still typing furiously as he speaks, as if he is operating on two entirely different planes at one time, the public image and the man underneath hard at work, managing both as best he can. As if he does this often, it is second nature to him, he wouldn’t even notice by now. She can relate to that.

“Good evening, Mr Hamilton.” She replies with a small smile.

“I hope you don’t mind if I call you Eliza,” He continues, “I can see that your badge does say Elizabeth, but I heard one of the other nurses call you Eliza and it suits you much better.”

She folds her arms over her chest.

“And why do you say that, Mr Hamilton?”

He merely shrugs in response, still typing, still working.

“Elizabeth is long and careful. Not that you’re not careful! You’re precise, but Elizabeth is not, it can be broken down into so many different forms- Eliza, Ellie, Liza, Beth, Betty, Betsy-“

He laughs as she wrinkles her nose at the last one, and his fingers finally stop flying as he pauses, pushes his glasses up from the end of his nose. He never wears glasses at public appearances, but they suit him. It might be because he seems to squint less, or maybe the position of the rims mask the dark circles under his eyes, but he always seems less exhausted, younger, when he has them on.

“Eliza will do just fine, simple as it is.” She moves over to her desk to pull out the ward notes.

“Simple! Hardly. It’s a beautiful name, just like you.”

He does that sometimes. Slips out compliments as easily as he sends a ten-page email. She’s seen the length of some of his printed documents, it can be frankly quite terrifying to watch him correspond. He hardly notices the comments, forgetting them as soon as they slip past his lips. They’re thought out, eloquent and well meaning, but that doesn’t make them thoughtful.

He’s everything she’d ever imagined politicians to be.

Even that seems hardly a fair assessment of Alexander Hamilton. He’s caring; her heart broke one hundred times over the first night she'd been charged with Phillip, watching his father shatter beside his bed, time and time again. Trauma cases are never easy.

But Alexander Hamilton is a quick learner. He’s adaptive.

His son needs him, so he’s there. He’s in the hospital day in, day out, no questions asked. He doesn’t wait for them to give him permission to stay, they don’t wait for him to demand it. Something about the energy surrounding him left them without a need to run to the protocol. Eliza’s fairly sure they would have lost the argument, nonetheless. His book may have been about 300 pages too long, but it was _brilliant_.

The country needs him, so he brought his work to the hospital. No questions asked.

But sometimes, he still manages to catch her off guard.

It’s not that she’s never been called beautiful before. Her parents were generous with their affections, ample with adoration. The words have been squealed at her by grinning friends, stammered at her on stagnant first dates, murmured to her in the most intimate ways she could imagine. However, she’s rarely heard them uttered absentmindedly, as factual, rather than flattery or fondness.

She occasionally wishes she didn’t blush so easily.

“How is Phillip going today do you think, Mr Hamilton?”

At this, he looks away from his work, pauses properly, looking over at his son. Phillip appears to be settled, his observations look good.

“He’s okay, I think. And honestly, please, call me Alexander.”

Eliza nods, running her finger along the line of observations recorded during the day, hour by hour.

“I think he’s looking okay, too.” She reads over the plan for the night, and is genuinely excited to see what the day team have recorded there. “And it looks as if we’re starting to wean his sedative.”

Alexander looks over to her, brow furrowed.

“What does that mean?” He asks, “Is that good?”

She moves out from behind the desk, coming to sit beside Alexander on the seats. He shuts his laptop, suddenly attentive and alert. The poor man has received too much bad news in his life, she realises, and he’s preparing for the worst at every instance. Her smile is swiftly wider, easier.

“It’s good, Alexander.” And she can see the anxiety seep out as he exhales. “It means the doctors think he’s well enough to try wake him a bit. So we’ll keep the pain medication going, he’s still got a lot of healing to do, but we’re going to reduce the amount of sleeping medications, a little at a time, and see how he copes. He’s not just going to suddenly sit up, but he might respond to your voice, might open his eyes a little.”

At her last words, his relief is palpable. But all he says is, “Okay.”

She sits there a moment longer, waiting to see if he has any other questions for her, but he seems a little shocked, so she decides to leave it. She’ll be there all night if he needs her for anything.

Back behind her computer, Eliza reads more carefully over the day’s notes. Phillip was reviewed by the trauma team, his spine has been fully cleared and they’ve confirmed that there’s no sign of any brain trauma, which is fantastic. The gastro surgeons seem a little concerned about the packing around his liver and might take him back to theater, but that isn’t unexpected or even unusual. The infectious diseases team have collected an array of antibiotics in place of his spleen, and a few more for the wound, but it appears to be healing well.

When she looks up, Alexander is still working hard. But he’s moved his chair, until it is pressed right up to the bed, the arm rest pressed beside the bed’s edge, his legs tucked beneath the side. He’s typing with one hand. The other is laced between Phillip’s fingers, holding on tight.

She smiles. It’s a quiet victory, for them both.

There’s a commotion from across the other side of the ward, and she looks up to see Gilbert, Mulligan’s Lafayette, arriving back from recovery. Mulligan is with him, of course. Peggy greets him with a matching, exhausted smile, as they settle into their paired rhythm for the evening. Eliza has watched them for many years from the other side. They’re well matched, in temperament, in attitudes. Tonight, they seem equally well matched in weariness. She’ll go over to their side in a little while, she decides, to see how their Lafayette’s are doing, let them know how Phillip is progressing.

Goodness knows, they know a little bit of good news around this place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh it's been a while! I've just transferred from Australia to France for a few weeks which has resulted in (a) I don't have any good internet at the moment, and (b) working hard to get my head around medicine in French! So, updates are slow for now, but they will happen :D Thank you for your patience! xx


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